Violence Viewed As Infectious Disease
A report discussed how to view violence as an infectious disease. It specifically deals with being exposed to actual violence, not mediated, but it seems relevant to video games.
I’m interested to know if the methodology holds up, so if anyone has good analytical skills I’d love to see their analysis of this study method.
Though this may (and probably will) be turned into an argument to prevent kids from seeing virtual violence as well “just in case”, the argument could be made the other way: this study, using sound methodology, shows a strong link between witnessed real violence and acts of violence later. Why, then, is there no comparable strong result linking witness of virtual violence? Such studies have been frequently attempted. It’s arguably an easier study to conduct: unlike the study involving real violence, there is no strong ethical barrier to deliberately exposing kids to virtual violence. Or at the least, the exact same methods can be used. Given this, the lack of an evident link based on good study seems to strengthen the position that minors who witness virtual violence are not more likely to engage in real violence. (In fact if Gerard Jones’ hypothesis is correct one may see a decrease in real violence, though I’d not expect that either).
It’s a sophisticated argument to make and could be stated better. But I will bet that this very study will soon be cited by those who seek to limit the distribution of violent video games “for the sake of the children”.
To state my boilerplate again, if it turns out that seeing/participating in virtual violence does make a certain class of minors more violent, I’d want to know and act accordingly. I can only hope the solution to violence is that easy to solve.
Tags: censorship, harmful-games, kids, law, Parenting, research
