It's not particularly compelling to me. Not sure what the formal term is but it's a sidecar study of another project. There wasn't much investigation into how the kids were playing the game, and level of personal aggression was determined by self-survey.
It's extremely important to scientifically verify "obvious" things, both because some people disagree and because things that are widely believed sometimes turn out to be false.
I think for those of us who have played any amount of shooters can attest that the game itself wouldn’t make you any more violent. It’s one of those “common sense” things that for non gamers seems obvious: “violent games make you more violent”, and the for the gamers out there the opposite is true, it’s obvious that they don’t.
Yeah. After a game of pew pew you simply don't feel like getting up and out to f__k s__t up. If you play to your satisfaction you just feel like doing something entirely different for a while.
With possible exception of multiplayer games that you loose too much. Those things can enrage you.
Maybe? It depends on how you look at it. I've heard of a guy inspired by playing Prison Architect to become a corrections officer. Or I wouldn't be surprised if many people joined the military because of being inspired to by COD.
I think maybe there is some discussion to be had about the difference between personal violence, such as a particular person carrying out a violent crime, and the general acceptance of violence as a viable solution to a myriad of problems.
This reminds me of when I was at grad student in that area. It was really frustrating to read all of the studies from e.g. Anderson and Bushman asserting the links between violent media and aggression.
These publications were headline-grabbing, but some of the study design was laughable. The whole state of affairs led me to leave the discipline (which led me to a career as a software engineer). I'm glad that I did, because the reproducibility crisis hit hard within a few years of me deciding to do something else with my life.
Some of the studies that I read made me think that there was a link between frustration (caused by e.g. undesirable outcomes in videogames, or performance issues like high latency) and aggression, but of course the researchers assumed it was the violence.
Anderson and Bushman never met something that didn't cause "aggression." And in the several studies coauthored by Anderson that I have read I have not seen a definition of what they mean by aggression. I remember one mentioning "raising your voice."
Then the news media just reads the abstract and says "a new study shows videogames make you violent!"
Oh yeah, the "Hot Sauce Paradigm" easily quantifiable, never backed up that it actually correlates to aggression in real life. From Adachi and Willoughby (2011):
"Lieberman et al. [1999] found that scores on [the hot sauce] paradigm were positively related to both trait and physical aggression scores on the Buss and Perry (1992) Aggression Questionnaire, supporting the convergent validity of the Hot Sauce Paradigm, although to date no study has measured its association with aggressive behavior outside the lab."
I think psychologists frequently struggle to delineate cultural criticism and science: from its inception those two modes of thinking have been uncomfortably intertwined; no one reads Jung or Feud as a serious scientists anymore (and if you do you'll see it's mostly highly caveated platitudes about human nature based on anecdotal experiences). But there is value in connecting cultural trends to personal behavior, it's just not always scientific.
I'd be interested in seeing some studies that focus on possible links between gaming addiction and violent behavior, or other addictions in general (or other undesirable outcomes).
People with ADHD are very likely to find themselves abusing drugs, or videogames. Not even dopaminergic drugs are causing ADHD, so why would games? Or what do you want to study? Yes, people with ADHD are likely to abuse games, that's well established.
> Why is the prevalence of kids addicted to video games on the rise?
Because we have tons of companies peddling and researching how to create addictive games, without much regulation. Several of them even hide gambling (lootboxes) within games.
I played Hearthstone quite a bit in the past. The loading screen is literally the screen of a slot machine!
Also, way more kids got devices for playing games today than before, and them carrying it at all times is new. Being connected to the internet 24/7 is new too.
I'm absolutely terrified at the moment when my 3 year old son will get his hands on video games. So far we encourage outdoor play, playing with physical toys and very little screen time, etc. At some point some clash emerge (my son has a stubborn facet), a parent can guide only so much, kids do have to gain little autonomy at some point or at least prove it to themselves they do take some decisions. The problem is that lots of new games enforce really bad habits and any child can become a causality to dynamic. I will try to postpone that moment as much as possible and curate the content as to mitigate the problem. I remember when I got my first computer I was so fascinated by it that nothing my parents would say would stick but I got lucky, I got bored of games rather quickly and became interested in making them myself and that opened the gate to programming. The computer community seemed to be a lot more benevolent back then, now..
People were unwilling to pay for mobile games, which lead to the rise of the free-to-play model. Zygna with their Facebook games found an incredibly profitable variant of this: make a game that's addicting and has to be played in short intervals on a regular schedule. These games are reliable and easy to make and very profitable, so they exploded. Now lots of elements of that leak into console and PC games.
This is entirely my own experience but the friends I had in high school/university always clocked in way more hours in WoW than I could doing repetitive tasks such as reputation grinding, crafting, dailies, raiding etc. I always wondered if it was something to do with ADHD or possibly the medications they took. The latter seems less likely as they played even more when they were off their meds.
I took add meds in high school, they made me obsessed with yugioh. It was very strange, I didn't really like the game much when I wasn't on them, but as soon as I started back up I would spend all day theory crafting new decks
I can tell you, as someone with quite severe ADHD, it affects gaming as well. What I mean is, I can focus just as little when I am playing games and just get distracted by my smartphone. It's been like this as a kid too, the game isn't really that enjoyable when you can't focus and pretty much miss the story.
Medication could have that effect but I experience quite the opposite. It almost makes me feel "bad" that I am playing a game and doing something more productive. That's generally how these meds work, they "stress" you into doing tour work, so you don't do it the day before you have to turn it in.
But I guess it's different for a professional gamer. It maybe doesn't feel unproductive when it's your main source of income.
Another thing is, the H in ADHD stands for hyperactivity. To play a game however, you have to sit still.
I do still play some games, but only those that are non competitive and casual. For example, I really like playing Stardew Valley, it's very calming and because it is open ended, there is no FOMO.
Funny. As someone who is borderline ADHD, I've always attributed my inability to play MMOs to the ADHD. I can be pretty focused for a few days, but over the long term I get bored and have to move on to something else. When I was younger I rarely even finished single player games before getting bored.
This is something that I'm seeing a lot as elementary school teacher in Germany. Kids exposed to excessive video game - Normally, parents that work full-time and sit the kid in front of the video game/tablet/etc to be able to get things done, - got specially worse after the first lockdown - are being diagnosed with ADHD and are starting to get Ritalin.
My kids play video-game, I play video-game, and I have nothing against it. However an excessive exposition is a pattern that i can relate to ADHD.
I'd love to see more specific studies around video game use. There's just so many variables to account for. How does duration, solo/team play, or player skill (win/loss rate) affect the findings?
In my experience, there's definitely negative and positive correlations to my mood, curiosity, patience, and productivity.
Perhaps in the case of some individuals, there may even be a negative link: finding a non-destructive outlet for violent tendencies. I recall seeing a recent article (the title and site escapes me) that posits something similar with regards to the rise of internet pornography and a seeming reduction in serial killings.
This is odd because the rise of internet pornography has certainly led to a rise in more violent and extreme sexual activity.
We are starting to see choking accidents during sex at higher rates than before (very obviously because it is being popularized through pornography).
BDSM has also had a popularization through various media and that is becoming more ubiquitous in everyday life.
Video games are clearly fantasies you can't ever live out (you can't be the guy in GTA because you'll go to jail). But pornography is a fantasy you can very easily replicate, and I think that difference is important here.
Sure, but that’s my problem with this whole thing.
Some idiots and media claimed there was some obvious links to violence and video games to use as reasoning for increased government control... and now the push back is NO NEVER HAPPENS!
But in some people yes, of course it hurts. There are definitely some people who are unstable and seeing hyper-graphic depictions of violent mutilation is not healthy. There are some people in the opposite.
These studies always end with a DEFINITE correlation or lack of. The truth is obviously it’s a scale. And while the result is yes, some people might be negatively effected that doesn’t mean the population at large needs to be “protected” with censorship.
My mother specialized in early childhood learning and developmental psychology. She never once blinked when my brother and I played Doom or Wolfenstein, some of the most violent games of their times. We were allowed to play with toy guns and listen to whatever music we wanted including heavy metal (which my father despised.)
I asked her about this later in life and her answer was and she laughingly told me "I knew you two were well aware of the fact that it was a fantasy. I never saw it influence any unhealthy behaviour. Plus its a good aggression outlet for young boys."
I live in a Mexican city near to the border with the US, the violence got really bad 10 years ago (some cartels were fighting for the border, now it is a lot calmer). Anyways “Narco culture” has influenced a lot of people (mostly on poor neighborhoods) and therefore it has influenced kids, it’s really sad to see boys playing with guns pretending to be narcos. The government has tried to ban those kinds of toys, I don’t know, does that really help? I guess I don’t have a strong opinion since that doesn’t look like a solution, but in the other hand it’s sad to see those boys aspiring to be narcos.
I'm from Mexico too. Kids (males mostly) playing with toys guns or swords is normal.
Almost all games/sports are microcosms for wars, football, basketball, tag, hide n seek. Both kids and adults love these microcosms of war.
They don't pretend to be narcos because they like toy guns. They do it because they aspire to a quality of life they will never get via a normal working job.
Ironically in Mexico, they have the same reputation. But yes, a small minority of smart kids play to be astronauts or businessmen in their free time.
What looks more exciting for a kid? Seeing your narco uncle on your birthday with a PS4 gift? Or your banker 8am-8pm uncle with a hot wheels as a gift?
If you are not from Mexico it will be hard for you to understand this issue.
You also don't see banda music where the guy with the big house and women and drugs and cars is singing about how he just oversaw a successful corporate merger.
Everyone likes some intrigue and mystique. James Bond will always have more of it than a claims adjustor.
Hard to track. At least on my family circle the people that own hunting rifles and shoot frequently since young age are way more responsible around guns than people who only want a gun for self-defense or as decoration.
I don't think it's any different from playing soldiers or cops and robbers. Little kids just aspire to what they see as local physical violent power. It's just fantasy of power when you have none because you are little kid.
> Doom or Wolfenstein, some of the most violent games of their times
> Plus its a good aggression outlet for young boys.
This is one of the standing theories why the influx of those types of games in the 90s coincided so perfectly with a drop in crime. A closely related one is games in general, as "gives them something to do instead of go out and cause trouble".
Somewhat Tangential: Without any instruction my 2 and 4 year olds know how to turn things into weapons to beat each other with. Like puppies they seem to be testing limits to rough play.
What surprised me is what happened when I didn't intervene: a few times the older one completely dominated and got his way. But more often than not the older one displayed empathy and tried to apologize and give kisses and give the younger one additional toys.
Maybe this is an unoriginal idea but it bears repeating: I think kids have more ability to self regulate than we typically treat them as having.
That's why it's so important to let them play. They end up figuring out a lot of important things by themselves that it would be almost impossible otherwise.
I don't know if they are inventing society or they are learning how to act on a society. And what I mean by "how to act on a society" I mean to learn how to interact with others, where are the limits, the consequences of your actions, etc.
> I think kids have more ability to self regulate than we typically treat them as having.
This "kids need adult supervision" is a relatively new thing, we used to be sent out to play as kids for HOURS (be home by dinner) and ran the woods and parks or played murderball (soccer with tackling) and other forms of roughhousing, all without serious mayhem. Parents would let us "work it out" if there was a fight.
Having grown up in the manner you describe, and being a parent of several young kids - I do find the prospect of them having a similar childhood pretty terrifying.
I am forever thankful for a childhood like that - but letting my kids run amok in this day and age for hours brings me a lot of anxiety. It is an interesting paradox that makes me a bit sad.
edit: for the record, we have them in wrestling / jiu jitsu - so their plate is still full re: physical activity and social interaction.
Not the GP, but for me the answer is "cars." And child services coming after me for being neglectful. And rattlesnakes. But mostly cars.
Even with statistics about danger being down across the board, in still pretty worried about my kids getting hit by an automobile. The raw statistics are even one area where danger is rising- fatality numbers are back over the mid 90s.
^ this. You can show someone who’s afraid of flying that it’s the safest form of travel all you want, but you’re not going to convince them. Anxiety usually isn’t rational, so rational means of convincing don’t work.
Any chance you'd like to take a stab at convincing me I shouldn't worry about my (young) kids getting hit by cars? I feel like it's an unfortunately rational anxiety.
I didn’t say you shouldn’t worry. I said that ignoring evidence showing a downwards trend is irrational and used airplanes as an example. I haven’t looked at the stats about children getting hit by cars.
Please don’t read words from me that aren’t there.
To add to the "cars" problem: these days there are many more people on the road who are incentivized to drive as a fast as possible to do their jobs. Amazon, UPS, FedEx etc delivery drivers are pushed to the brink to deliver as many packages as they can within a certain time frame, and there are thousands of untrained taxi drivers running around for Uber and Lyft and playing with their phones.
Cars are one. Feeling like my kids aren't as 'street smart' is another - but that is on me.
Anecdotally, I see a lot more obviously mentally ill people on the streets than when I was a kid. Crime in general is more prolific in my area than when I was a kid (Sonoma County, CA).
I'm not saying my anxiety is rational, or that the stats back up my anecdotes - I am merely stating my perceptions.
There are more people around. More cars. Where I live, there's about 1000x more needles than when I grew up. Way more crazy people roaming around. Maybe statistically they aren't causing any problems, but they sure harass me enough. Especially when it comes to "playing in the woods". The woods around town are the worst place now. We used to find camps and places where teenagers would party here and there but now when I walk in the woods (unregulated, non-protected "parks", or outskirts of real parks) there's people camping out and smoking, drinking, doing whatever. Both my hometown and where I live now are like this. It's not my imagination. My parents see the same thing. I don't care if the statistics say it's better.
> It's not my imagination. My parents see the same thing. I don't care if the statistics say it's better.
Kind of strange, though, isn't it? We live in a safer time than any before (have regressed slightly in the past few years), but many, many people have an intrinsic gut reaction that things are getting worse.
"Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We, their sons, are more
worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more
corrupt." - Horace, ~20BC
You should check out "Angels of our better nature" by Steven Pinker - it's a fascinating book about the decline of violence, both over the course of human history, and recently.
The local woods by you may indeed be worse than it was during your childhood, but overall as a society we are doing better.
B) Which crimes did your mind gravitate towards? Were those crimes ever major parts of all crimes committed? Does the presence or absence of children materially change any of that?
There's a pretty popular theory that the advances in forensics and the prevalence of surveillance cameras are a driving factor in the reduction of crime. Even stuff like kids having a cell phone to call police or track their location could be a mitigating factor.
I do agree that there are still many easy marks. I think the advancement of the aforementioned technologies and the parent comment's point about parents in general being more cautious removes many of the opportunity for certain crimes, or at least to get away with them.
Thanks, hadn't read that before, and now I know more than I did. That's a kinda heavy article to read esp. considering what we might be doing that'll have unknown effects in 20 years
This New Zealand study [1] attempted to look at the crime-lead relation in a place where it wasn't confounded by childhood socioeconomic status, and "failed to support a dose-response association between BLL (blood lead level) and consequential criminal offending".
I'm not trying to say the theory is wrong; just that correlations are really tricky to study, it's hard to control for all confounding variables, and it's hard to know for certain when a correlation is due to causation.
The harm by lead occurs in the first 3 years of life. High blood lead in early childhood is not detected later in childhood [0]. The New Zealand study uses blood tests performed ten years too late. This flaw makes the study almost useless.
Additionally, only 30 of the children in the study had low blood lead, <5 ug/dL. This is because the blood was collected in the 1980s and New Zealand only banned leaded gasoline in 1996. Look at Figure 1 in [1], and notice that at 5ug/dL, the damage is already done.
[0] Caito, S., & Aschner, M. (2017). Developmental Neurotoxicity of Lead. Neurotoxicity of Metals, 3–12. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-60189-2_1
[1] Nevin, R. (2000). How Lead Exposure Relates to Temporal Changes in IQ, Violent Crime, and Unwed Pregnancy. Environmental Research, 83(1), 1–22. doi:10.1006/enrs.1999.4045
That does sound like a flaw, although the paper by Jessica Wolpaw Reyes I often see mentioned that argues lead causes crimes isn't based on measuring lead levels in individuals at all, but on the total lead released by cars during the time studied. That sounds even less robust.
I'm not sure if the paper you linked measures the correlation between blood lead levels in the first 3 years and crime rates because it's behind a paywall.
I wasn't aware of sci-hub, but it seems awesome. Thanks!
The paper you linked by Nevin seems to be doing the same thing as the paper by Reyes. They didn't test the lead levels in individuals studied, but looked at the total lead released by vehicles at the time.
>I am forever thankful for a childhood like that - but letting my kids run amok in this day and age for hours brings me a lot of anxiety. It is an interesting paradox that makes me a bit sad.
Anxiety because of what the kids may do or anxiety because of what other adults may do?
Funny story. my 4yo was playing with the neighborkids around the same age. the neighbor girl came to me to tattle, saying they weren't sharing. I told her you need to work it out with them, use your words and manners. Clearly not the result she was looking for, she turned and yelled "He said you have to share!" I clarified with the other kids "that's not what I said! Work it out!"
Haha! That's a good one. She heard what she wanted to hear, or she was testing out lying. Kids all test out lying around the pre-school age, some of them find it useful and keep doing it.
I'd lean towards the lying part. Her strategy of leveraging higher powers didn't pan out, so she went with plan B of illusion of leveraging higher powers.
She just went with the advice and used her (untrue) words and (authoritative) manners to get what she wants. But was immediately betrayed and shot down by her advisor.
Approaching an adult for guidance isn't "tattling". Maybe I'm biased, but I grew to resent that word because I grew up in an environment where it was used more often than not by parents and teachers to excuse themselves from dealing with children in their care who were bullying others.
approaching an adult for guidance isn't tattling. Approaching an adult to use leverage to get what you want is tattling, especially when its over "sharing a toy that isn't hers". Learning to become dependent on external intervention for all conflict is not a life skill I want to teach my kids.
It depends on the specifics. Based on the original comment, if they've already broken into the house, they will be able to break into any room you are hiding in. If they are truly there to beat you to death, you have to be ready to defend yourself with whatever force is necessary to stop that threat. What that level of force is will vary greatly depending on situation, locale, persons involved, etc.
>> if they've already broken into the house, they will be able to break into any room you are hiding in
I disagree. If possible, call the police immediately. Barricade yourself in a room and if it comes to it defend yourself. I don't fancy my chances against someone armed and motivated so it's a last resort.
This is based on the advice from the Police Service in my country.
I'm not saying don't barricade yourself. Just that if you have an attacker in your house who is intent of killing you ("beating you to death") and an average police response of 5 minutes or more, they can get into any room in a typical house. You can barricade the door, but anyone who knows about construction knows drywall is easy enough to get through. Most interior doors are lightweight wood and newer ones are practically cardboard. So usually it's much harder to get into a house from outside than to get to other internal parts of the house due to material differences.
I think most people have no idea how insecure their homes are. Mostly because these types of scenarios are statistically rare and people always think it will happen to others. Plus, it could be hard to sleep at night knowing just how easy it is to pick locks if someone actually wanted to.
Sometimes I forget how America centric HN is. The internal walls in my house are made of stone. But it's an old house. Most in my country are made of brick.
Older homes do tend to be more sturdy. Still, are the interior doors more durable than the external doors? Are the ceilings secure? Could be easy enough to go into the attic (either with access or by force) and come down in the room in under 5 minutes. Of course if the motive is to kill the occupant then the aggressor could bring tools to defeat the construction.
>>Still, are the interior doors more durable than the external doors?
Yes.
>> Could be easy enough to go into the attic (either with access or by force) and come down in the room in under 5 minutes.
Locate the entrance to the attic. Then the room I am in, despite not knowing the layout to the house. Then smash a hole in the ceiling. Then climb through said hole without getting stuck. Without me noticing. In under 5 minutes.
It is quite interesting.
I'm failing to see how you could be missing my point.
>>Still, are the interior doors more durable than the external doors?
"Yes."
I doubt this. They might be equal, but I doubt the exterior door would be weaker than the interior one. It's simply not logical.
"Locate the entrance to the attic. Then the room I am in, despite not knowing the layout to the house. Then smash a hole in the ceiling. Then climb through said hole without getting stuck. Without me noticing. In under 5 minutes."
Who said the entrance had to be located? If you can smash it down, why not up? (And who said smash? If their motive is to kill you, they may have brought tools, as I said before.) Who said you wouldn't need to notice?
The point is that there are weaknesses in any house. Maybe houses in your area aren't drywall, but attackers can adapt their tools and tactics to address whatever is common in that area. It's really not as hard as people think.
"Maybe you're referring to the locks in which case you have a point. But exterior doors in my area tend to have big glass panels on them."
Locks, sure. But those don't mean much if you have doors and door frames made of wood and they aren't either extremely heavy or reinforced.
"Are they bringing a ladder as well?"
A ladder or chair from your own home should work fine. You might be suprised at how often burglars use tools they find in the target house.
"Because then you would know exactly where they are and you could escape more easily."
Not if they're making entry to the attic right outside the room you're in so they can work on that and watch the door.
You're really derailing the entire conversation with trivial what-ifs that aren't even related to the original point. None have offered any evidence refuting the point that if someone wants beat you to death, the police will be too slow to save you.
>> You're really derailing the entire conversation with trivial what-ifs that aren't even related to the original point.
My original point was that (some) people teach their kids that when in trouble to rely on themselves and not on established social structures yet as adults they do the opposite (the sane thing to do).
Look back over our conversation. You are the one making the what-ifs, while I am merely refuting your points as they come.
>>Not if they're making entry to the attic right outside the room you're in so they can work on that and watch the door.
Read that back to yourself. The intruder is both in the attic and at the door at the same time.
>> You might be suprised at how often burglars use tools they find in the target house.
So 5 minutes to locate where the occupant keeps the ladder, fetch the tools from their car (unless they were carrying them under their arm when breaking in) and/or break down a door before the target climbs out the window.
Realistically, the occupant of the house is most likely dead within seconds. But if they have some kind of head start, the police advice is to find a secure location from which to call the police. I'll take that over the advice of someone whose seen Home Alone too many times.
"But if they have some kind of head start, the police advice is to find a secure location from which to call the police. I'll take that over the advice of someone whose seen Home Alone too many times."
LOL why ddo you assume that I'm the latter and not the former?
You can live in your own reality. Clearly talking to you is pointless.
they're going to be coming through your doors not your walls I would posit. Do you have thick solid hardwood doors internally in your home with really sturdy hinges and locks?
I live in a brick terraced house in a country where brick houses are the norm. Most of the internal walls, and even the dividing wall with my neighbours are drywall. The only brick walls are the front, back, divider with one neighbour and a wall that was formerly an exterior wall prior to an extension 50 years or so ago. The doors themselves are pretty solid but the doorframes and hinges would give way long before that mattered
I read the first sentence and thought you would comment on the fantasy of the ultra violent burglar who is intent on murdering someone who has barricaded themselves in a closet …
Yeah, this is my problem with "barricading". I have no doubt I can bust through one of my interior doors with one kick pretty easily. Front and back door are a bit more sturdy of course, hopefully between that and my alarm I'd be able to get to my pump action before the burglars got to my bedroom. My alarm will call the police
I keep a baseball bat by the bed and a shotgun in the corner. That's my plan on resolving a burglary. Somewhere in there it would be nice to call the police. But they are a good 15-20 minutes away and would only be coming to see if I made it out alive or not.
You should get rid of the gun or put it in a safe when you are not using it for sport. It's too dangerous to have it just in the corner. It's more likely that you or a family member will use it against yourself or someone else you love.
Yes it's mostly deaths related to suicide. With a few domestic homicides or children playing with weapons. But suicide thoughts can happen to everyone, yourself in the future perhaps, or someone you care about and where you didn't see or ignored the signs.
I think we should let the individual decide based on their own situation. Taking away the choice to own a gun for self defense, or suggesting in a blanket statement that people should sell their gun or make it inaccessible (useless for self defense), is not something I support. Maybe your perspective is different, and that's fine.
That French page is not very useful - total numbers of firearm deaths is not as important as looking at suicide rates. Suicide rates between the US and France are 13.7 and 12.1 respectively (WHO 2016 data). That doesn't seem like a very big difference, especially if you consider the large difference in guns per 100 people (US 120, France 19, suggesting weak correlation). You also see developed countries in that data which have low gun ownership and higher suicide rates (Sweden, Japan, etc). This seems to point to factors other than gun ownership driving suicide rates.
The New York article is looking at short term reduction studies. We see that suicides drop temporarily after a prevalent method of suicide has been removed. If we follow the rate over time, it will increase as people learn of new ways to kill themselves. In the US, we have recently seen an increase in teens gassing themselves with household chemicals. It just takes time for societal knowledge to perform that shift, so you end up playing a shell game.
The best way to reduce suicides is to focusing on getting at-risk individuals treatment. The starting point is to destigmatize the subject and educate people on the options. Addressing the root problems are more effective than addressing the symptoms, which just ends up going down a never-ending rabbit hole of banning the next method to replace the last. There are a number of mental health workers who agree.
I understand your point. My perspective on having easily accessible firearms for self defense is different indeed, and is also related to the law where I live : weapons must be stored in an approved safe that is bolted to the house.
I think the main issue with firearms and suicide is the easyness and effectiveness. For sure someone very sick and determined may find other methods. I don't know if it's easy to compare suicide rates and weapons usage among various countries. Perhaps with fewer guns USA would get a lower suicide rate among males. Perhaps not.
So yes it's your choice. From my perspective, having a easily accessible gun is not worth the risk for me and my family considering the data and the likelyhood of needing a gun for self defense.
And given the relatively low occurence of situations that would require a gun if you don't use it for sport, your choice seems rational and reasonable. I think you're also right about the sick people comment. The two people I know who committed suicide were elderly and started experiencing alzheimer's. Their decisions seemed quite final. I suppose if I were in a similar situation, I would probably find it a rational decision, but I'm not sure if it would be reasonable.
I've heard the argument before (temporary idea and effective means), which probably is true of the non-terminally ill. I haven't seen any data supporting it so far. I've also haven't seen any definitive evidence against it, only suggestive stuff.
There are some states with restrictive gun laws that show a slight decrease, but others seem to be unaffected (continue to increase). Just as there were less restrictive states that show the same mixed behavior. (CDC data referenced by both sides)
One thing that I saw in the CDC data was that suicide rates have risen over the past 30 or so years for all states. Non-firearm suicides are 27% more common since the 80s, but it didn't look at why firearms are decreasing as a percentage. RAND says the number of homes with at least one firearm has stayed fairly consistent over that time (40% -/+ 5%). So it seems that there isn't a substantial reduction in suicides based solely on gun control laws, but it seems it's also impossible to say if the number would have been higher without those restrictions. The fact the ownership has stayed the same, but firearms are a lower percentage of suicide cases could just be demographic or preference issue, but we don't know.
One interesting thing I observed which I didn't see studies about (because both sides are focused on just confirming their positions on pro/anti gun policies) is the correlation between mental healthcare service ratings and suicide. This is just rough, but I found these two maps appearing to be more correlated than the gun ownership and suicide maps/studies. Just something I found interesting and would need an actual study to look into it.
> Because coding of the mortality data changed to the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) beginning in 1999, analyses by year and race/ethnicity were conducted for 1999--2007 to examine rate changes during that period.
> I've heard the argument before (temporary idea and effective means), which probably is true of the non-terminally ill. I haven't seen any data supporting it so far.
There's a few natural experiments that are relevant: limiting pack sizes for paracetamol in the UK; change from coal gas to natural gas in the UK in the 1960s; change to cars with catalytic convertors.
I see them mention a change in that study and that they did some binomial regression for ethnicity in those years. But it seems that's for secondary attributes like ethnicity, not for the main cause of death (suicide). Or am I missing something?
I'm aware of those examples. Those examples were before the internet, meaning people commit suicide they way they know how. Socially, you couldn't just ask someone how to commit suicide with an alternative method, but now you can look it up on online so you don't have to ask anyone.
The coal gas example does show a reasonable reduction (18-13). But after the conversion process was completed, you see it's still creeps back up to 15 just within a couple years.
The paracetamol example might actually go against your argument. We see that the suicide rate overall is very steady after the package size change, which suggests that people found other methods.
uhh. if someone is in your house with intent to harm you, the police will not arrive in time to prevent it. Police response times are measured in minutes. You're much better off running away or defending yourself with a weapon, the ultimate equalizer being a firearm.
For people not institutionalized with a jailer or nurse in close proximity there is no "external help" that has a useful SLA if you unexpectedly find yourself in a situation where bodily harm is imminent. You either need to prevent the situation from happening yourself or deal with it yourself.
Pretty sure police and most government services don't even give you an SLA (loved that you used that term though, gave me a nice chuckle). It's more of a "we'll get to it when we can". Not to mention, the courts have held that the police have no obligation to protect you (ie you can't sue them for not getting there in time or not rushing into a building to save you, etc).
> Approaching an adult to use leverage to get what you want is tattling, especially when its over "sharing a toy that isn't hers"
Very good qualifier that the toy is not hers. Maybe mention that and that you don't have any authority over their toy.
> Learning to become dependent on external intervention for all conflict is not a life skill I want to teach my kids.
That is a good thing to have. My knee jerk reaction as having had absolutely no guidance on how to resolve social conflicts where I was say getting bullied to this comment initially was it might be an overuse of "just deal with it", but I realize that was not your intention :)
It absolutely can be though. Obviously you keep an eye on your kids with other kids, sometimes even being sneaky about it. I know that I am, but generally I let them try to work it out.
"Work it out" is a strategy for equals. With major age/size/strength differences it just becomes domination and submission. Parents refusing to provide the "monopoly on violence" just results in kids who are worse at fighting learning to do whatever the bully says, and probably still getting beaten for the fun of it.
I mean I do agree that kids need to learn to navigate conflict, but adults should ideally be monitoring and should definitely get involved when power differentials get out of hand.
> Parents refusing to provide the "monopoly on violence" just results in kids who are worse at fighting learning to do whatever the bully says, and probably still getting beaten for the fun of it.
there's refusing to engage when its friends squabbling over toys. Its another whole level when battery comes in... Pretty big difference.
I have seen "work it out" method with friends kids and it convinced me that I won't do it.
In one case, it ended up with older boy consistently bullying smaller sibling. By the time parents started to intervene, it was habit and it took months to be stopped. The younger kids still somewhat dislike brother, altrought he treats her much better now.
Other cases I have seen were roughly similar. Work it out may work out may not. But pretty often it amounts to enabling bullies - and even blaming the victim if the victim does not defend itself in perfect magical non noisy calculated way.
I like work it out with guard rails. Observe, be prepared to talk about feelings, and ensure the lesson isn't "might is right", but otherwise give kids the opportunity to experiment with social interactions.
'Parents would let us "work it out" if there was a fight.'
And now days the school calls the police for minor fights and kids end up with records that can drastically alter their lives in a negative way. I almost wonder if this zero tolerance mindset creates an all-or-nothing mentality in kids when they realize they aren't allowed to defend themselves. And if this mentality (equivocating criminal record and expulsion with the end of one's opportunities and life) leads to more extreme behavior - hey, if the cops are going to be called for punching my bully, why not take it further?
It does lead to issues. I'm a young enough to have gone through school with zero tolerance policies and heavy use of police calls. I got a record with my school for cursing in the 8th grade. That's right. I got suspended from a public school for 2 weeks and kicked off the football team and out of the school play for saying, "What the fuck?!" in shock after a kid poured something down the back of my shirt.
This lead to me being punished more than normal for the rest of my public schooling. Once you have a "record" if you so much as dare to be 5minutes late to a class they just send you to "in school suspension" as a bad kid for the entire day. There I met kids doing much worse things than me, and almost all of it was escalated by administration getting police involved. Police would hang around these kids to arrest them again and again, never teaching them anything.
Yeah, I was sort of at the beginning of those policies. I think there were still enough older teachers/administrators that thought it was BS, that many of the minor issues never resulted in anything extreme. I remember one teacher caught me and another kid in a bit of a scuffle (not really a fight) over a prank gone wrong. Basically, we both apologized to each other and discussed the mistake/misunderstanding. We didn't even get detention and still remained friends.
Granted this was in a rural area, which seems to be a bit slower to adopt those newer policies. I mean, we still had kids bringing their guns to high school in their cars to go hunting in the evening.
Haha, I almost forgot this gem. In grade school, I accidentally brought a pocket knife to school since it was left in one of the side pouches of my backpack after a camping trip the previous weekend. I was naive then. I told my teacher about it, which could have ended very badly. His response, "Just don't take it out or tell anyone". Oh, the good old days.
I'm a fairly recent graduate from school- I accidentally carried a pocketknife in the bottom of my bag from grade 6 to 11, never had amy problems with it.
"No, bullying cannot be solved by the victims, otherwise it would not be a problem in the first place."
How do you think that works if zero tolerance policies punish the aggressor and victim equally, essentially preventing the victim from defending themself? And by your reasoning, then bullying shouldn't exist today because the school policies should prevent it, yet it's more rampant than ever.
I was bullied once. Eventually I fought back and gave the kid a bloody nose. Guess what - he was nicer to me and to other kids too. Prior to that he had no empathy. That experience changed him. I know others with similar experiences too.
> if zero tolerance policies punish the aggressor and victim equally
I never said that. Please don't make up strawmans.
> And by your reasoning, then bullying shouldn't exist today because the school policies should prevent it, yet it's more rampant than ever.
I never said that.
> I was bullied once. Eventually I fought back and gave the kid a bloody nose. Guess what - he was nicer to me and to other kids too. Prior to that he had no empathy. That experience changed him. I know others with similar experiences too.
Funny how I only hear the "stood up to bullies succesfully" story and never the other ones. See my other comment.
"I never said that. Please don't make up strawmans."
That's not a strawman, that's the definition of zero tolerance policies in schools - both parties in a fight get punished the same.
"And by your reasoning, then bullying shouldn't exist today because the school policies should prevent it, yet it's more rampant than ever."
'I never said that.'
What you did say is that victims can't solve bullying and that school policies should. What we clearly see is that bullying is a growing issue under zero tolerance policies because the victim is given disincentive to defend themselves - it becomes a vicious cycle that protects bullies. It also is at odds with my personal experiences.
If the zero tolerance policy isn't the school policy you were speaking about, then what is? You imply that school policies should prevent bullying, but we clearly don't see that.
"Funny how I only hear the 'stood up to bullies succesfully' story and never the other ones. See my other comment."
You do hear of the other stories - kids committing suicide or shooting up a school because they are trapped in a failed zero tolerance system that leaves them with seemingly all-or-nothing options. You also witness kids just "taking it" if you are observant enough.
So far you seem to be just trolling - offering neither arguments nor facts that support zero tolerance systems or refute the facts that I, and many other on here, have presented against those systems.
"No, don't twist my words: I'm against the culture of pushing the burden of defending oneself onto the victim. Because it's literally victim blaming."
Then why did you respond the way you did? I never blamed victims. My post was that zero tolerance policies prevent a victim from defending themself. You said that victims cannot stop the bullying and that the school needs policies to do so, but without the police.
>How do you think that works if zero tolerance policies punish the aggressor and victim equally, essentially preventing the victim from defending themself?
Sorry, I don't really understand your point. eeZah7Ux seemed to me to be saying that the victim should run and report it to the school. I don't see how a zero tolerance policy would punish the victim in that case.
The main problem is that it's your word against their's. So if nothing happened that would be caught on video, say just verbal bullying or it was in a blind spot, then nothing will be done because there's no proof.
Now the scenarios I've been talking about are where the bullying has become physical. Most schools that have a zero tolerance policy will punish both people who were involved in the fight/pushing/etc regardless of who started it, again it's mostly due to lack of proof, but the policy expressly forbids any violence. So even if someone punches you first and continues to attack you, the policy means that if you punch back you are in violation too and will be punished. So if you are in a corner and can't run away, the policy says you just have to take it without fighting back or get punished for defending yourself.
So the same will be for your scenario of running and telling the school. For one, you have to escape that bully and hope you're faster than them (before you get trapped/ tackled and it turns physical) or you both end up being punished. Then you have to have some sort of evidence that shows you were innocent and the bully person was unprovoked. Incidents without proof generally result in no action from the school due to that lack of proof, so the bully will continue tormenting you.
>For one, you have to escape that bully and hope you're faster than them (before you get trapped/ tackled and it turns physical) or you both end up being punished.
You have this same problem with fighting back. You have to hope you're a better fighter, if you're not you will be pummeled. The benefit of running is that very quickly you will reach other people, so you don't have to run very far. With fighting it could continue for a long time and you might get fatigued before the bully. When I took Taekwondo, my instructor said the best thing to do if you're about to get into a fight is run.
How many scenarios at school are there were 2 kids are alone and no one can see them or is in earshot? One technique that might be good, is to teach kids who are worried about being bullied that they should try to stay in a group, or within earshot of others, so they can call for help if they get attacked. And to be aware of surroundings and the environment so that they always have an escape route, they don't get stuck in a corner. Avoiding being stuck in a corner could also help if you're fighting, it gives you more maneuverability. This advice would help weak kids too, not just strong kids.
>Incidents without proof generally result in no action from the school due to that lack of proof, so the bully will continue tormenting you.
What if you create a diary with times and dates of each incident?
Also, what if you can record proof? Start an audio recorder (and inform the bully if you're in an all-party consent state).
Running is a good option, but I'm saying it shouldn't be the only option.
It doesn't need to be only 2 kids. The zero tolerance policy has made it so that bystanders won't get involved because they will get into trouble too if they are physically breaking up a fight.
A diary won't really mean much. It's still your words, but now they're just written down.
Recording could be good. It depends on the state laws as well as school policy. You might not have to inform them in some all party states, because many have exceptions for recording if you believe a crime of violence is likely to occur. The bigger problem is if that exception doesn't exist and there are other people around, you need to inform them or get their consent. If they aren't around, the bully knows you're recording and may take the device from you to destroy the recording.
I agree with you that zero tolerance is stupid and that victims should be able t fight back. But is there any evidence that bullying is more rampant than ever? All statistics I have seen point to kids being more well behaved, less violence, less drugs, fewer teen pregnancies ect.
I agree that most of those have been decreasing (yay!). Unfortunately, bullying is said to affect 1 in 4 students during their school careers, the highest it's ever been.
As someone who has punched multiple bullies into the face, I can tell you it does stop it quite efficiently.
Two of them basically instantly switched to never again daring to acknowledge that I even exist, for the remaining >5 years of being on the same school. The remainder wasn't smart enough to stop instantly and thus got multiple beatings. There's always the one kid who needs to touch the hot stove multiple times until they realize it hurts ;)
Would I recommend it to children now that some decades have passed and I am an adult? I don't know.
But it does work, ideally if applied without prior threatening and in quick succession. People really don't like having multiple fists in their face when they didn't expect it to happen.
This method works for the people who are able to do it (ability, personality, temperament). But it tends to reinforce the idea that those who can't take these steps somehow deserve to be bullied.
Maybe to a slight degree. There are some of those people with the abilities who are willing to stand up for others. Of course, the no tolerance (punish everyone) policies can promote bystanders to remain only bystanders.
^^^ this... What's funny is something a civics teacher said in 6th grade, "If you have the ability to intervene or help, you have the responsibility to do so." .. a few decades later, it's become "don't get involved, get a teacher or call the police."
Plenty of lives are saved every day by those that aren't police, but have the ability to intervene.
> I can tell you it does stop it quite efficiently.
Please avoid the patronizing tone. Your experience is not universal. I've personally witnessed victims escalating the conflict into much worse situations.
And it was that victim's choice to try to defend themself in the way that they did. It may have been better to choice a different option for that scenario. What we are talking about are zero tolerance policies that remove that choice by imposing unjust penalties for self defense. Just because it isn't work for one person doesn't mean we should remove that choice from everyone.
I use the word choice here, but the right to defend oneself is really a natural right.
> Please avoid the patronizing tone. Your experience is not universal.
I'm sorry, I did not mean to sound patronizing, but rather enabling for people in similar situations to be aware of the choices they have.
> I've personally witnessed victims escalating the conflict into much worse situations.
Of course punching someone in the face can always result in them falling in a really bad way and just being dead right away!
My experience comes from a schoolkid age where body weight and muscle strength were still low enough to make that rather unlikely I would guess. Even if something bad had happened, I was still below the ago of criminal responsibility, so while neglecting the emotional and physical consequences for other people, consequences for me would have been a slap on the wrist.
Examine for a minute why people remain bullied with such a simple solution. I am certain that every bullied child has heard about the solution of "just punch them in the face". They choose not to do so. Why? Is it just purely fear? A cursory glance would probably tell you no.
I'd argue that the number of bullied people who could give a bunch of bullies "multiple beatings" are.... few.
The typical victims of bullying are the ones that don't act to stop it. That's why they're being bullied in the first place.
I don't want to victim blame, because they are victims... but it's often enabled by their own character traits. They'll be greatly helped throughout life if they acquire the ability to defend themselves.
I generally agree. One thing to point out though, is that under zero tolerance policies, some victims who do have the ability to defend themselves are forced to work within a regulatory framework that would severely punish them for doing so, to the point that being the victim of a bully is less harmful or more tolerable than being a victim of the system. Likewise, those who don't have the ability to defend themselves would be less motivated to learn those skills if they know the system would punish them (why learn it if you're not allowed to use it?).
It doesn't help and may accelerate feelings of having no way out, but you also can't be seen as "violence is sometimes okay" when its literally a crime as an adult.
There's always enough kids from abusive or neglectful households to make lots of conflict in schools. It used to be (I have heard) that schools and teachers were extremely well respected such that a parent wouldn't go against something a teacher said. So in a way the teacher could help actually parent the kid. Nowadays school is more like having a personal childcare service and parents act like they're paying customers and control every aspect of their kids interactions with it.
If you look look at my comments, I do say there can be verbal bullying. I'm not recommending that someone escalate a verbal altercation into a physical one. I'm saying that zero tolerance policies prevent people who are bullied from fighting back in a physical altercation.
On a side note, depending on the state and the specific circumstances, if a bully utters fighting words, one could be justified to get physical if there was an imminent threat to violence. Of course, law and school policy are different.
this is survivorship bias, I also knew an unsupervised child that accidentally lit himself on fire and suffered third degree burns over the majority of his body
Kids did suffer injuries and deaths playing unsupervised before. Whether the risk is worth it or not is a fair question, but we can't just pretend there is no risk in letting your kids play without supervision.
This is the same argument that anti-vaccine people make... we survived as a species for thousands of years without vaccines, we don't need them now!
Yes, we survived as a species but a lot of individuals did not survive.
Every safety and health improvement we make can suffer the same argument (we survived for years with lead paint! Asbestos has been used in a ton of buildings and we are still here!)
Of course, not every safety improvement is worth it. Some risk is acceptable when the gains are high. I just think it is important to be realistic about the risks when we are talking about the benefits.
Throughout the 1800s there were tens of thousands of homeless kids just running around New York City making ends meet. The data is unreliable but it’s interesting to wonder how their lives turned out.
Yep I sniped a lot of people with my wooden gun when growing up playing military games in the woods. I've never so much as been in a fist fight and have talked others out of it on a few occasions (mostly in college). These video games cause violent people is the same sort of ludditery we saw when novels became popular, when comic books became popular, when rated R movies became a regular thing, and on down through the annals of history.
When my son was around 4 I was playing GTA and was not playing it violently when I took a car from someone and they tried to pull me out he said "Hit him dad! Hit him!" but never in his life (he is 21 now) has he struck anyone. It was just a game to him.
A week ago I pulled out my warhammer miniatures and my 5 year old picked the leader and started shooting and stabbing people. Then she proudly stated that he was "collecting dead people".
I was quite surprised because her normal play involves taking care of her baby dolls.
The morbidity of children never ceases to amaze me. Death, in play at least, doesn't seem to frighten them. I guess its the same among adults, but it's interesting that make-believe and reality are seperable even at a young age. I don't think we adults give kids enough credit for how sophisticated they can be. (Probably because there are a lot of areas where they aren't and it's easier to just bucket them in whole.)
One thing I (thankfully) realized pretty early on when raising my kids is that they're fully-intelligent humans pretty much from the start. They just dont _know_ stuff, but their intelligence is all there from a much younger age than most people seems to think.
Its not unoriginal but it ignores the issue where the professionals and government officials want to interfere. They want you to believe you cannot handle the situation properly so that their existence can be maintained. Sadly there are enough abusive parents and such to keep them in existence to interfere with parents who are otherwise doing just fine
I think it depends on the kid. You just have to rely on the parents judgement. When our oldest was 4 our twins were 1 and she was very abusive towards them. She was trying to make them hurt and upset.
At 5, now they mostly get along fine. Unless they get in her toys. Then it's bodyslam time.
Thank you for saying this, because I’m the parent of a toddler and an infant right now and I swear my only job is trying to keep the older one from hurting the younger one.
I think people form stronger ethical boundaries when it is self-motivated - i.e. your 4 year old learns how to be sincerely empathetic because you allowed them to deal with the emotions from rough play, rather than forcing them to play nicely.
I used to teach kids for many years, and I noticed the "helicopter parents" tended to have more mischievous children, presumably because these kids rarely feel intrinsically motivated to do anything (it's always coming from the parents).
I agree. I think this can even be true of adults. Many times I see people make absolute or semi-extreme comments about a topic, but they've never been in the type of situation they are discussing. I think through mistakes as a child, we learn to question our emotional responses/impulses more.
Some kids have the ability to self regulate more than others. Much of it is just based on their observations of the world and experience within.
The problems is that as parents we often just group all kids together in how we treat them. They think it's either one way or the other for all kids rather than treating them as individuals with different experiences and different minds.
The one thing I have seen to be true amongst all my peers children is that if you talk to them and treat them like adults, they are much more likely to act like adults at a younger age. That is to say, take into consideration their experience and feelings any time you want to intervene or have an interaction.
*not parenting advice, just imho. apply as you see fit.
There was a story recently about a real-life event that started out a lot like the scenario in Lord of the Flies, i. e. a group of children stranded on an island.
It turns out their society started looking after their weakest and made decisions based on consent.
Meanwhile, the book just confirms everyone's beliefs not only about children but mankind itself, namely of a Hobbesian/Darwinian/Randian rule-of-the-strongest being the natural state of affairs.
I think Hobbes and Darwin would both object to being grouped in with Rand. Hobbes would say the world is violent therefore we should take measures to protect ourselves (with a neutral external force or Leviathan). Darwin would say that ruthless competition has driven genetic change, but would never say that this ruthless competition was intrinsically good or should be encouraged. Rand, on the other hand, showed casual disregard for human suffering and would glorify in winner take all competition (even though that’s not how societies best organize themselves nor how evolution plays out in the real world where cooperation is usually a winning strategy)
"Competition" in the Darwinian context is often understood in a too narrow way anyway.
Organisms can become more fit by carving out a specialized niche for themselves where they don't have to compete. Or by becoming more cooperative as a species.
The association with ruthless domination of others can be misleading.
I would be much more interested in that topic. But like this one, I suspect there is a gray area that no one wants to talk about at all, and for some reason the answer must be black and white. Which makes me suspicious.
I believe there’s a very narrow link between the specific thing you practise in the game and any real life use of that. Nearly every game is gamified too much to be useful in this way. The n-back games may be an exception.
You could check out sci-hub(.do) and plug the DOI (https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2020.0049) into the search field. One of the greatest resources for researchers and the scientific community at large.
Definitely. I'm about half way through 'Medal of Honor' on the Quest 2 and I've never really been in to war games (or movies) at all. But I've been having an absolutely great time doing the various missions - and training - where you get to mow down the nazis with a variety of weapons.
And naturally, different to a console game, I'm physically pointing the weapon (controller) at the (virtual) target. It's really more fun than it should be ;)
It feels like being a character in a (cheesy) WWII movie.
(Also, I don't think stabbing zombies in the head in 'Walking Dead :Saints and Sinners' will ever get old)
Maybe I'm having a brainfart, but the abstract seems illogical to me. Can someone help me understand how
> [the] group with low initial violence “was no higher [don't they mean no lower??] in aggressive behavior than the high initial violence group at the final time point.”
leads to their conclusion
> adolescents who played a high-level of violent video games at an early age did not show more aggressive behavior later in life than those who played fewer to no hours of violent video games at an early age.
I'll tell you what does make me more aggressive. It's not the content of the video game itself. It's the other players in the multiplayer. I've basically sworn off of multiplayer for well over a decade now, with only vanishingly brief revisits to confirm things are only getting worse.
Indeed, growing up my parents banned Super Smash Bros., because the outcomes of matches would sometimes enrage us so much that we would get into fights in real life.
But that's true for more than just multiplayer video games. Sports come to mind. Basically anything involving intense competition and taunting is going to cause a temporary increase in aggressive behavior.
>Indeed, growing up my parents banned Super Smash Bros., because the outcomes of matches would sometimes enrage us so much that we would get into fights in real life.
Personally, my take on this is you were seeing and effect; not a cause.
As a kid you MAY have had a common issue expressing loss or disappointment. The game MAY have brought this up, there was always a loser every match. So, your parents MAY have considered this the cause of your inability to properly handle it.
I MAY be wrong. I have no idea about you. But that fits ME perfectly.
I found the thing that brought me out of that was stressful singular competition, fighting, shooting, chess, performance, etc. Things that you excel on your skill not anything you can blame someone else for.
I learned the value in making a plan, executing it, and learning when and why if it didn’t work.
Now as an adult, I find myself more ready to deal with stressful things like dogs fighting on walks, medical emergencies, criminal activity, and things I just see other adults completely lock up on. I think this comes from an inability to process loss and stress.
> So, your parents MAY have considered this the cause of your inability to properly handle it.
1.) You underestimate how uncomfortable and annoying resulting environment is for everyone in the household.
2.) "My brother and me fought" typically have consistent aggressor and removal of game is often action design to protect the consistent victim.
3.) Removal of game is logical consequence. If parent simply tolerates asshole behavior in that situation, the kid has no motivation to even try self control. It amounts to enabling where parents see issue, but tolerate it and the issue grows and grows.
This study is strictly about whether you are more violent 10 years after playing the game.
If does not study at all the actual issue most of those who lived with excessive gamers (whether kid or adult) have. Meaning, annoying aggression right after playing and verbal abuse toward household members because they dare to exist if same flat where he lost the match.
Anecdotally, nearly all of my friends growing up played violent video games. I did see this behavior from one of my friends and his aggression following losing a video game. But he also had the same reaction after we lost a soccer game as well. I think that video games may show this effect, but it is not necessarily the cause. After all, all of my friends played the same violent video games (often together); the individual was the common factor in the aggressive activity, not the game.
In his case, his buddies in soccer either put up with it or don't. They have choice whether to go play with him. Also, soccer is played relatively rarely, like twice a week.
In case of gaming, people in the same householde are getting that despite not having much choice. It is also much more frequent - dedicated gamers play hours and hours every day.
Another aspect with soccer is that really only few people can do overnight, so again, the bad behavior due to sleep deprivation is less likely to happen. If course it can happen if you party while night or something.
These logistical differences can make big difference in terms of how annoying the hobby is for those who have to put up with people like your friend.
Perhaps, but is depression the outcome of video games? Or videogames are a popular activity for depressed people? If you don't have friends, can't go out, socialize, you are likely to either watch TV all day or play videogames.
Games in moderation are a great form of entertainment. Just like anything else they can be abused.
I have spent many hours playing games and I used to regret that, but looking back I had fun with friends and was still able to get good grades and stay active.
I love video games, but I agree. You also have nothing to show for the time (I don't buy the "if you had fun, it was worth the time" argument). Hobbies where you can learn/hone new skills are more valuable. With video games, there's nothing to show for it.
The only scenarios where I think they're beneficial is when they're enjoyed with friends (preferably in-person), or for the elderly to help with hand-eye coordination and keeping their minds active and busy.
So you are against most forms of entertainment? Art, music, movies, books, and games, are all forms of entertainment where you have little or nothing to "show for the time".
I think this focus on hyper-productivity as some form of ideal is a sad way of approaching life and self-worth.
My view for youths is that anything that increases your attention span in other domains is good. Art, (normal speed) music, board games, sports, daydreaming and books more so than (modern) movies, commercial TV, videos, tiktok or gaming.
You can always pursue less productive outlets when you have a job.
> You also have nothing to show for the time (I don't buy the "if you had fun, it was worth the time" argument).
This is also true of: (recreational) sports, reading, social interaction, and probably the majority of recreational activities. The entire point is to have fun, because having fun is important.
> Hobbies where you can learn/hone new skills are more valuable. With video games, there's nothing to show for it.
Not strictly true. Games are fun because they are a learning experience. Boredom is the result of having learned all that is learnable from a thing, and frustration is the result of continually failing to learn from a thing. In this sense, all games are teaching or honing skills, just ask anyone who's finished Getting Over it With Bennett Foddy.
You may argue that games teach "worthless" skills, but I would say the same is true of many hobbies and, moreover, not everything valuable is valuable because it can be put on a resume.
I find that basically any video game is educational. From the most basic form of just teaching you new vocab to things like seeing into a job you haven't or wouldn't do in real life. Games are basically virtual work that's been made a bit more safe/easy/fun. You can grow digital vegetables and walk away knowing a bit more about that process than before playing. A game's dialogue and story may present philosophical themes that impact your real life, quite similar to reading a book or watching a movie.
The digital resources that don't cost you money also allow you to build things and think through things you otherwise couldn't. This is Minecraft's big appeal. You can't necessarily cut down the trees in your real yard, build structures without permits, and so on.
Games with online social elements also present similar benefits to hanging out with people. If you're fighting monsters with a group, you may talk about all sorts of things in your downtime.
My friend history teacher hates games in historical settings for that reason - kids think random stuff they learned from it are history and most of what they learned is complete nonsense.
I had an idea games should be made as hyper-realistic, brutal and bloody as technically possible so every gamer would know actual war is nightmare, not fun and they really want to avoid it at all damn cost - the way those who has actually witnessed war feel.
That’s the thing with media portraying violence (and I’m saying this without judgement) it is always glorifying violence (“gewaltverherrlichend” in German) since one doesn’t experience the violence itself.
Even if (war) video games were to be made “gorier”, bloodier, more brutal one still doesn’t experience losing someone, re-building a life in a country that has been bombed to ruins, or dealing with the aftermath such as physical wounds or mental trauma.
The primary difference is point of view - whether you make audience to imagine themselves as perpetrators and emphatize with them. Or whether you show the point of view of victim, civilian and make audience emphasize with them. Super realistic blood is not necessary, treating victims as primary fully developed characters would be.
The entertainment is designed to make you feel good and make you feel like soldiers are overall good heroes.
There's a part of a mission in Medal of Honor (recent VR version) where you're trying to make your way up Omaha Beach in WWII. The way it's done is very good, and really seems to drive home to the player just how utterly harrowing the whole experience must have been.
I always thought violent video games had the opposite effect of aggression - desensitization. At the beginning of playing "The Last of Us", I sort of felt bad whenever a (non-zombie) human died (either by my hands or part of the story). I especially felt bad when I made a 14 year old girl kill someone. But by the end I remorselessly hunted and executed every human I came across no matter which character I was.
Of course, that didn't translate to any real life loss of empathy (I don't think), but it was interesting how quickly the game desensitized my regard of fictional humans so that I stopped seeing them as anything of value but rather an enemy/monster to be unquestioningly destroyed.
No one who thinks video games are to blame for violence is going to be convinced by a study of any length. People form their beliefs on COVID, vaccines, video games, and anything else in an irrational way. We need to pierce information silo's and echo chambers so these studies actually affect the ignorant who feel they are right with bad evidence and their misfounded opinions.
I think that even if there are negative consequences, there are just as many benefits of putting kids into the systems with rules and structure to learn and improve.
Even with a 10 year study, there will still be groups/collectives soliciting political posture and donations on the back of fighting all this with the usual "think of the children" trope to push it along.
Simple fact is we have far more evidence to prove the Earth is not flat and yet there are those that still insist in going against all the evidence in the World. This will be no different.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 398 ms ] threadPaper - https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2020.0049
It's not particularly compelling to me. Not sure what the formal term is but it's a sidecar study of another project. There wasn't much investigation into how the kids were playing the game, and level of personal aggression was determined by self-survey.
What's the hypothesis?
With possible exception of multiplayer games that you loose too much. Those things can enrage you.
These publications were headline-grabbing, but some of the study design was laughable. The whole state of affairs led me to leave the discipline (which led me to a career as a software engineer). I'm glad that I did, because the reproducibility crisis hit hard within a few years of me deciding to do something else with my life.
Some of the studies that I read made me think that there was a link between frustration (caused by e.g. undesirable outcomes in videogames, or performance issues like high latency) and aggression, but of course the researchers assumed it was the violence.
My favorite was where they used the volume of hot sauce poured into a cup as the measure of aggression.
Hopefully they've come up with some better ways of measuring it since then.
Then the news media just reads the abstract and says "a new study shows videogames make you violent!"
"Lieberman et al. [1999] found that scores on [the hot sauce] paradigm were positively related to both trait and physical aggression scores on the Buss and Perry (1992) Aggression Questionnaire, supporting the convergent validity of the Hot Sauce Paradigm, although to date no study has measured its association with aggressive behavior outside the lab."
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2cab/940f9292928a48d57c3752...
https://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/childhood-adhd/adhd-and-video...
People are too quick to say "causation/correlation" but often times there is overlap. One can encourage the other.
Because we have tons of companies peddling and researching how to create addictive games, without much regulation. Several of them even hide gambling (lootboxes) within games.
I played Hearthstone quite a bit in the past. The loading screen is literally the screen of a slot machine!
Something else is going on. There is a positive feedback loop of some kind, and it seems apparent if you follow the money.
1. more games being produced because the industry is larger and the barrier of entry was reduced
2. more and easier ways to access them: free-to-play models, relatively stable $60 top-end price even after 2 decades of inflation
3. more socially acceptable and includes more than the nerdy kids from ~20 years ago. You could get bullied for playing EverQuest when I was a kid.
4. streaming platforms complements it and probably encourages playing games more often
5. more "addiction innovation" through game mechanics
6. maybe a long shot, but both parents often working now means less time spent with kids
Medication could have that effect but I experience quite the opposite. It almost makes me feel "bad" that I am playing a game and doing something more productive. That's generally how these meds work, they "stress" you into doing tour work, so you don't do it the day before you have to turn it in.
But I guess it's different for a professional gamer. It maybe doesn't feel unproductive when it's your main source of income.
Another thing is, the H in ADHD stands for hyperactivity. To play a game however, you have to sit still.
I do still play some games, but only those that are non competitive and casual. For example, I really like playing Stardew Valley, it's very calming and because it is open ended, there is no FOMO.
My kids play video-game, I play video-game, and I have nothing against it. However an excessive exposition is a pattern that i can relate to ADHD.
In my experience, there's definitely negative and positive correlations to my mood, curiosity, patience, and productivity.
We are starting to see choking accidents during sex at higher rates than before (very obviously because it is being popularized through pornography).
BDSM has also had a popularization through various media and that is becoming more ubiquitous in everyday life.
Video games are clearly fantasies you can't ever live out (you can't be the guy in GTA because you'll go to jail). But pornography is a fantasy you can very easily replicate, and I think that difference is important here.
Sure, but that’s my problem with this whole thing.
Some idiots and media claimed there was some obvious links to violence and video games to use as reasoning for increased government control... and now the push back is NO NEVER HAPPENS!
But in some people yes, of course it hurts. There are definitely some people who are unstable and seeing hyper-graphic depictions of violent mutilation is not healthy. There are some people in the opposite.
These studies always end with a DEFINITE correlation or lack of. The truth is obviously it’s a scale. And while the result is yes, some people might be negatively effected that doesn’t mean the population at large needs to be “protected” with censorship.
I really hate the black and white of this.
I asked her about this later in life and her answer was and she laughingly told me "I knew you two were well aware of the fact that it was a fantasy. I never saw it influence any unhealthy behaviour. Plus its a good aggression outlet for young boys."
Almost all games/sports are microcosms for wars, football, basketball, tag, hide n seek. Both kids and adults love these microcosms of war.
They don't pretend to be narcos because they like toy guns. They do it because they aspire to a quality of life they will never get via a normal working job.
What looks more exciting for a kid? Seeing your narco uncle on your birthday with a PS4 gift? Or your banker 8am-8pm uncle with a hot wheels as a gift?
If you are not from Mexico it will be hard for you to understand this issue.
Everyone likes some intrigue and mystique. James Bond will always have more of it than a claims adjustor.
Post-freudian hydraulic metaphor of emotions. That one's about as outdated as psychological views get.
We have experimental data that punching things when you are mad doesn't make you less mad, to give the most straight forward example.
> Plus its a good aggression outlet for young boys.
This is one of the standing theories why the influx of those types of games in the 90s coincided so perfectly with a drop in crime. A closely related one is games in general, as "gives them something to do instead of go out and cause trouble".
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii45/oversaturated/2r6ns4...
What surprised me is what happened when I didn't intervene: a few times the older one completely dominated and got his way. But more often than not the older one displayed empathy and tried to apologize and give kisses and give the younger one additional toys.
Maybe this is an unoriginal idea but it bears repeating: I think kids have more ability to self regulate than we typically treat them as having.
This "kids need adult supervision" is a relatively new thing, we used to be sent out to play as kids for HOURS (be home by dinner) and ran the woods and parks or played murderball (soccer with tackling) and other forms of roughhousing, all without serious mayhem. Parents would let us "work it out" if there was a fight.
I am forever thankful for a childhood like that - but letting my kids run amok in this day and age for hours brings me a lot of anxiety. It is an interesting paradox that makes me a bit sad.
edit: for the record, we have them in wrestling / jiu jitsu - so their plate is still full re: physical activity and social interaction.
Even with statistics about danger being down across the board, in still pretty worried about my kids getting hit by an automobile. The raw statistics are even one area where danger is rising- fatality numbers are back over the mid 90s.
Please don’t read words from me that aren’t there.
Anecdotally, I see a lot more obviously mentally ill people on the streets than when I was a kid. Crime in general is more prolific in my area than when I was a kid (Sonoma County, CA).
I'm not saying my anxiety is rational, or that the stats back up my anecdotes - I am merely stating my perceptions.
Kind of strange, though, isn't it? We live in a safer time than any before (have regressed slightly in the past few years), but many, many people have an intrinsic gut reaction that things are getting worse.
"Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt." - Horace, ~20BC
The local woods by you may indeed be worse than it was during your childhood, but overall as a society we are doing better.
crime is lower across the board compared to 15-20 years ago
ignorance was bliss, for you
A) There are easy marks everywhere.
B) Which crimes did your mind gravitate towards? Were those crimes ever major parts of all crimes committed? Does the presence or absence of children materially change any of that?
I do agree that there are still many easy marks. I think the advancement of the aforementioned technologies and the parent comment's point about parents in general being more cautious removes many of the opportunity for certain crimes, or at least to get away with them.
And the fact that crime has dropped like a rock, with a ~20 year lag, after leaded fuel was phased out.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur...
I'm not trying to say the theory is wrong; just that correlations are really tricky to study, it's hard to control for all confounding variables, and it's hard to know for certain when a correlation is due to causation.
[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...
The harm by lead occurs in the first 3 years of life. High blood lead in early childhood is not detected later in childhood [0]. The New Zealand study uses blood tests performed ten years too late. This flaw makes the study almost useless.
Additionally, only 30 of the children in the study had low blood lead, <5 ug/dL. This is because the blood was collected in the 1980s and New Zealand only banned leaded gasoline in 1996. Look at Figure 1 in [1], and notice that at 5ug/dL, the damage is already done.
[0] Caito, S., & Aschner, M. (2017). Developmental Neurotoxicity of Lead. Neurotoxicity of Metals, 3–12. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-60189-2_1
[1] Nevin, R. (2000). How Lead Exposure Relates to Temporal Changes in IQ, Violent Crime, and Unwed Pregnancy. Environmental Research, 83(1), 1–22. doi:10.1006/enrs.1999.4045
I'm not sure if the paper you linked measures the correlation between blood lead levels in the first 3 years and crime rates because it's behind a paywall.
The paper you linked by Nevin seems to be doing the same thing as the paper by Reyes. They didn't test the lead levels in individuals studied, but looked at the total lead released by vehicles at the time.
Anxiety because of what the kids may do or anxiety because of what other adults may do?
Funny story. my 4yo was playing with the neighborkids around the same age. the neighbor girl came to me to tattle, saying they weren't sharing. I told her you need to work it out with them, use your words and manners. Clearly not the result she was looking for, she turned and yelled "He said you have to share!" I clarified with the other kids "that's not what I said! Work it out!"
If someone breaks into my house and tries to beat me to death, I'm not going to try to reason it out with them, I'm calling the police.
I disagree. If possible, call the police immediately. Barricade yourself in a room and if it comes to it defend yourself. I don't fancy my chances against someone armed and motivated so it's a last resort.
This is based on the advice from the Police Service in my country.
I'm not saying don't barricade yourself. Just that if you have an attacker in your house who is intent of killing you ("beating you to death") and an average police response of 5 minutes or more, they can get into any room in a typical house. You can barricade the door, but anyone who knows about construction knows drywall is easy enough to get through. Most interior doors are lightweight wood and newer ones are practically cardboard. So usually it's much harder to get into a house from outside than to get to other internal parts of the house due to material differences.
I think most people have no idea how insecure their homes are. Mostly because these types of scenarios are statistically rare and people always think it will happen to others. Plus, it could be hard to sleep at night knowing just how easy it is to pick locks if someone actually wanted to.
>>Still, are the interior doors more durable than the external doors?
Yes.
>> Could be easy enough to go into the attic (either with access or by force) and come down in the room in under 5 minutes.
Locate the entrance to the attic. Then the room I am in, despite not knowing the layout to the house. Then smash a hole in the ceiling. Then climb through said hole without getting stuck. Without me noticing. In under 5 minutes.
>>Still, are the interior doors more durable than the external doors?
"Yes."
I doubt this. They might be equal, but I doubt the exterior door would be weaker than the interior one. It's simply not logical.
"Locate the entrance to the attic. Then the room I am in, despite not knowing the layout to the house. Then smash a hole in the ceiling. Then climb through said hole without getting stuck. Without me noticing. In under 5 minutes."
Who said the entrance had to be located? If you can smash it down, why not up? (And who said smash? If their motive is to kill you, they may have brought tools, as I said before.) Who said you wouldn't need to notice?
The point is that there are weaknesses in any house. Maybe houses in your area aren't drywall, but attackers can adapt their tools and tactics to address whatever is common in that area. It's really not as hard as people think.
Maybe you're referring to the locks in which case you have a point. But exterior doors in my area tend to have big glass panels on them.
>> If you can smash it down, why not up?
Are they bringing a ladder as well?
>>Who said you wouldn't need to notice?
Because then you would know exactly where they are and you could escape more easily.
Locks, sure. But those don't mean much if you have doors and door frames made of wood and they aren't either extremely heavy or reinforced.
"Are they bringing a ladder as well?"
A ladder or chair from your own home should work fine. You might be suprised at how often burglars use tools they find in the target house.
"Because then you would know exactly where they are and you could escape more easily."
Not if they're making entry to the attic right outside the room you're in so they can work on that and watch the door.
You're really derailing the entire conversation with trivial what-ifs that aren't even related to the original point. None have offered any evidence refuting the point that if someone wants beat you to death, the police will be too slow to save you.
My original point was that (some) people teach their kids that when in trouble to rely on themselves and not on established social structures yet as adults they do the opposite (the sane thing to do).
Look back over our conversation. You are the one making the what-ifs, while I am merely refuting your points as they come.
>>Not if they're making entry to the attic right outside the room you're in so they can work on that and watch the door.
Read that back to yourself. The intruder is both in the attic and at the door at the same time.
>> You might be suprised at how often burglars use tools they find in the target house.
So 5 minutes to locate where the occupant keeps the ladder, fetch the tools from their car (unless they were carrying them under their arm when breaking in) and/or break down a door before the target climbs out the window.
Realistically, the occupant of the house is most likely dead within seconds. But if they have some kind of head start, the police advice is to find a secure location from which to call the police. I'll take that over the advice of someone whose seen Home Alone too many times.
LOL why ddo you assume that I'm the latter and not the former?
You can live in your own reality. Clearly talking to you is pointless.
In addition, please don't do personal attacks. We ban accounts that do that.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's really only valid if the person in question or his family have abuse or suicide issues.
About USA: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/upshot/gun-deaths-are-mos...
In France where weapons are relatively rare except for hunting : https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2017/10/05/quels-est-le-...
That French page is not very useful - total numbers of firearm deaths is not as important as looking at suicide rates. Suicide rates between the US and France are 13.7 and 12.1 respectively (WHO 2016 data). That doesn't seem like a very big difference, especially if you consider the large difference in guns per 100 people (US 120, France 19, suggesting weak correlation). You also see developed countries in that data which have low gun ownership and higher suicide rates (Sweden, Japan, etc). This seems to point to factors other than gun ownership driving suicide rates.
The New York article is looking at short term reduction studies. We see that suicides drop temporarily after a prevalent method of suicide has been removed. If we follow the rate over time, it will increase as people learn of new ways to kill themselves. In the US, we have recently seen an increase in teens gassing themselves with household chemicals. It just takes time for societal knowledge to perform that shift, so you end up playing a shell game.
The best way to reduce suicides is to focusing on getting at-risk individuals treatment. The starting point is to destigmatize the subject and educate people on the options. Addressing the root problems are more effective than addressing the symptoms, which just ends up going down a never-ending rabbit hole of banning the next method to replace the last. There are a number of mental health workers who agree.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-new-brain/201607...
I think the main issue with firearms and suicide is the easyness and effectiveness. For sure someone very sick and determined may find other methods. I don't know if it's easy to compare suicide rates and weapons usage among various countries. Perhaps with fewer guns USA would get a lower suicide rate among males. Perhaps not.
So yes it's your choice. From my perspective, having a easily accessible gun is not worth the risk for me and my family considering the data and the likelyhood of needing a gun for self defense.
I've heard the argument before (temporary idea and effective means), which probably is true of the non-terminally ill. I haven't seen any data supporting it so far. I've also haven't seen any definitive evidence against it, only suggestive stuff.
There are some states with restrictive gun laws that show a slight decrease, but others seem to be unaffected (continue to increase). Just as there were less restrictive states that show the same mixed behavior. (CDC data referenced by both sides)
One thing that I saw in the CDC data was that suicide rates have risen over the past 30 or so years for all states. Non-firearm suicides are 27% more common since the 80s, but it didn't look at why firearms are decreasing as a percentage. RAND says the number of homes with at least one firearm has stayed fairly consistent over that time (40% -/+ 5%). So it seems that there isn't a substantial reduction in suicides based solely on gun control laws, but it seems it's also impossible to say if the number would have been higher without those restrictions. The fact the ownership has stayed the same, but firearms are a lower percentage of suicide cases could just be demographic or preference issue, but we don't know.
One interesting thing I observed which I didn't see studies about (because both sides are focused on just confirming their positions on pro/anti gun policies) is the correlation between mental healthcare service ratings and suicide. This is just rough, but I found these two maps appearing to be more correlated than the gun ownership and suicide maps/studies. Just something I found interesting and would need an actual study to look into it.
https://www.mhanational.org/issues/ranking-states
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/...
It's very difficult to compare US data from before 1999 because the method of coding changed.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6001a11.htm
> Because coding of the mortality data changed to the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) beginning in 1999, analyses by year and race/ethnicity were conducted for 1999--2007 to examine rate changes during that period.
> I've heard the argument before (temporary idea and effective means), which probably is true of the non-terminally ill. I haven't seen any data supporting it so far.
There's a few natural experiments that are relevant: limiting pack sizes for paracetamol in the UK; change from coal gas to natural gas in the UK in the 1960s; change to cars with catalytic convertors.
I'm aware of those examples. Those examples were before the internet, meaning people commit suicide they way they know how. Socially, you couldn't just ask someone how to commit suicide with an alternative method, but now you can look it up on online so you don't have to ask anyone.
The coal gas example does show a reasonable reduction (18-13). But after the conversion process was completed, you see it's still creeps back up to 15 just within a couple years.
The paracetamol example might actually go against your argument. We see that the suicide rate overall is very steady after the package size change, which suggests that people found other methods.
Not if you live in a country where firearms are strictly regulated and self defence isn't a justifiable reason for a firearm permit.
"External intervention is violating my right to defend myself" is not a argument in favor of external intervention.
Very good qualifier that the toy is not hers. Maybe mention that and that you don't have any authority over their toy.
> Learning to become dependent on external intervention for all conflict is not a life skill I want to teach my kids.
That is a good thing to have. My knee jerk reaction as having had absolutely no guidance on how to resolve social conflicts where I was say getting bullied to this comment initially was it might be an overuse of "just deal with it", but I realize that was not your intention :)
I mean I do agree that kids need to learn to navigate conflict, but adults should ideally be monitoring and should definitely get involved when power differentials get out of hand.
there's refusing to engage when its friends squabbling over toys. Its another whole level when battery comes in... Pretty big difference.
In one case, it ended up with older boy consistently bullying smaller sibling. By the time parents started to intervene, it was habit and it took months to be stopped. The younger kids still somewhat dislike brother, altrought he treats her much better now.
Other cases I have seen were roughly similar. Work it out may work out may not. But pretty often it amounts to enabling bullies - and even blaming the victim if the victim does not defend itself in perfect magical non noisy calculated way.
And now days the school calls the police for minor fights and kids end up with records that can drastically alter their lives in a negative way. I almost wonder if this zero tolerance mindset creates an all-or-nothing mentality in kids when they realize they aren't allowed to defend themselves. And if this mentality (equivocating criminal record and expulsion with the end of one's opportunities and life) leads to more extreme behavior - hey, if the cops are going to be called for punching my bully, why not take it further?
This lead to me being punished more than normal for the rest of my public schooling. Once you have a "record" if you so much as dare to be 5minutes late to a class they just send you to "in school suspension" as a bad kid for the entire day. There I met kids doing much worse things than me, and almost all of it was escalated by administration getting police involved. Police would hang around these kids to arrest them again and again, never teaching them anything.
Granted this was in a rural area, which seems to be a bit slower to adopt those newer policies. I mean, we still had kids bringing their guns to high school in their cars to go hunting in the evening.
> "allowed to defend themselves"
> "punching my bully"
...and this is what most bullies would say. No, bullying cannot be solved by the victims, otherwise it would not be a problem in the first place.
Bullying needs to be stopped by the school - and without calling in armed bullies to stop the bullies.
How do you think that works if zero tolerance policies punish the aggressor and victim equally, essentially preventing the victim from defending themself? And by your reasoning, then bullying shouldn't exist today because the school policies should prevent it, yet it's more rampant than ever.
I was bullied once. Eventually I fought back and gave the kid a bloody nose. Guess what - he was nicer to me and to other kids too. Prior to that he had no empathy. That experience changed him. I know others with similar experiences too.
I never said that. Please don't make up strawmans.
> And by your reasoning, then bullying shouldn't exist today because the school policies should prevent it, yet it's more rampant than ever.
I never said that.
> I was bullied once. Eventually I fought back and gave the kid a bloody nose. Guess what - he was nicer to me and to other kids too. Prior to that he had no empathy. That experience changed him. I know others with similar experiences too.
Funny how I only hear the "stood up to bullies succesfully" story and never the other ones. See my other comment.
That's not a strawman, that's the definition of zero tolerance policies in schools - both parties in a fight get punished the same.
"And by your reasoning, then bullying shouldn't exist today because the school policies should prevent it, yet it's more rampant than ever."
'I never said that.'
What you did say is that victims can't solve bullying and that school policies should. What we clearly see is that bullying is a growing issue under zero tolerance policies because the victim is given disincentive to defend themselves - it becomes a vicious cycle that protects bullies. It also is at odds with my personal experiences.
If the zero tolerance policy isn't the school policy you were speaking about, then what is? You imply that school policies should prevent bullying, but we clearly don't see that.
"Funny how I only hear the 'stood up to bullies succesfully' story and never the other ones. See my other comment."
You do hear of the other stories - kids committing suicide or shooting up a school because they are trapped in a failed zero tolerance system that leaves them with seemingly all-or-nothing options. You also witness kids just "taking it" if you are observant enough.
So far you seem to be just trolling - offering neither arguments nor facts that support zero tolerance systems or refute the facts that I, and many other on here, have presented against those systems.
> If the zero tolerance policy isn't the school policy you were speaking about, then what is?
There is extensive literature on the topic in pedagogy and it often applies to adults surprisingly well.
- hire psychologists instead of cops
- fire any teacher that sees bullying and ignores it on purpose
- require teachers to talk about the problem. Silence and "boys will be boys" bullshit is a huge enabler.
- teach teachers the basics of psychology to spot patterns in students at risk
- encourage students to talk to psychologists
- require teachers to walk around the school and don't leave areas where teachers never go
- teach students de-escalation. Yes it's as skill and it can be learned like other skills
The policies you are listing are already in use! Why hasn't the issue been solved?
No, don't twist my words: I'm against the culture of pushing the burden of defending oneself onto the victim. Because it's literally victim blaming.
I'm also against punishing the victim in case they defend themselves, because it's also victim blaming.
This is nothing new. Most legal systems treat adults crime victims with a similar principle.
Then why did you respond the way you did? I never blamed victims. My post was that zero tolerance policies prevent a victim from defending themself. You said that victims cannot stop the bullying and that the school needs policies to do so, but without the police.
Sorry, I don't really understand your point. eeZah7Ux seemed to me to be saying that the victim should run and report it to the school. I don't see how a zero tolerance policy would punish the victim in that case.
Now the scenarios I've been talking about are where the bullying has become physical. Most schools that have a zero tolerance policy will punish both people who were involved in the fight/pushing/etc regardless of who started it, again it's mostly due to lack of proof, but the policy expressly forbids any violence. So even if someone punches you first and continues to attack you, the policy means that if you punch back you are in violation too and will be punished. So if you are in a corner and can't run away, the policy says you just have to take it without fighting back or get punished for defending yourself.
So the same will be for your scenario of running and telling the school. For one, you have to escape that bully and hope you're faster than them (before you get trapped/ tackled and it turns physical) or you both end up being punished. Then you have to have some sort of evidence that shows you were innocent and the bully person was unprovoked. Incidents without proof generally result in no action from the school due to that lack of proof, so the bully will continue tormenting you.
You have this same problem with fighting back. You have to hope you're a better fighter, if you're not you will be pummeled. The benefit of running is that very quickly you will reach other people, so you don't have to run very far. With fighting it could continue for a long time and you might get fatigued before the bully. When I took Taekwondo, my instructor said the best thing to do if you're about to get into a fight is run.
How many scenarios at school are there were 2 kids are alone and no one can see them or is in earshot? One technique that might be good, is to teach kids who are worried about being bullied that they should try to stay in a group, or within earshot of others, so they can call for help if they get attacked. And to be aware of surroundings and the environment so that they always have an escape route, they don't get stuck in a corner. Avoiding being stuck in a corner could also help if you're fighting, it gives you more maneuverability. This advice would help weak kids too, not just strong kids.
>Incidents without proof generally result in no action from the school due to that lack of proof, so the bully will continue tormenting you.
What if you create a diary with times and dates of each incident?
Also, what if you can record proof? Start an audio recorder (and inform the bully if you're in an all-party consent state).
It doesn't need to be only 2 kids. The zero tolerance policy has made it so that bystanders won't get involved because they will get into trouble too if they are physically breaking up a fight.
A diary won't really mean much. It's still your words, but now they're just written down.
Recording could be good. It depends on the state laws as well as school policy. You might not have to inform them in some all party states, because many have exceptions for recording if you believe a crime of violence is likely to occur. The bigger problem is if that exception doesn't exist and there are other people around, you need to inform them or get their consent. If they aren't around, the bully knows you're recording and may take the device from you to destroy the recording.
https://www.tctimes.com/news/why-bullying-has-become-so-prev...
As someone who has punched multiple bullies into the face, I can tell you it does stop it quite efficiently.
Two of them basically instantly switched to never again daring to acknowledge that I even exist, for the remaining >5 years of being on the same school. The remainder wasn't smart enough to stop instantly and thus got multiple beatings. There's always the one kid who needs to touch the hot stove multiple times until they realize it hurts ;)
Would I recommend it to children now that some decades have passed and I am an adult? I don't know.
But it does work, ideally if applied without prior threatening and in quick succession. People really don't like having multiple fists in their face when they didn't expect it to happen.
Plenty of lives are saved every day by those that aren't police, but have the ability to intervene.
Please avoid the patronizing tone. Your experience is not universal. I've personally witnessed victims escalating the conflict into much worse situations.
I use the word choice here, but the right to defend oneself is really a natural right.
I'm sorry, I did not mean to sound patronizing, but rather enabling for people in similar situations to be aware of the choices they have.
> I've personally witnessed victims escalating the conflict into much worse situations.
Of course punching someone in the face can always result in them falling in a really bad way and just being dead right away!
My experience comes from a schoolkid age where body weight and muscle strength were still low enough to make that rather unlikely I would guess. Even if something bad had happened, I was still below the ago of criminal responsibility, so while neglecting the emotional and physical consequences for other people, consequences for me would have been a slap on the wrist.
I'd argue that the number of bullied people who could give a bunch of bullies "multiple beatings" are.... few.
I don't want to victim blame, because they are victims... but it's often enabled by their own character traits. They'll be greatly helped throughout life if they acquire the ability to defend themselves.
There's always enough kids from abusive or neglectful households to make lots of conflict in schools. It used to be (I have heard) that schools and teachers were extremely well respected such that a parent wouldn't go against something a teacher said. So in a way the teacher could help actually parent the kid. Nowadays school is more like having a personal childcare service and parents act like they're paying customers and control every aspect of their kids interactions with it.
Self defense is not a crime.
On a side note, depending on the state and the specific circumstances, if a bully utters fighting words, one could be justified to get physical if there was an imminent threat to violence. Of course, law and school policy are different.
This is the same argument that anti-vaccine people make... we survived as a species for thousands of years without vaccines, we don't need them now!
Yes, we survived as a species but a lot of individuals did not survive.
Every safety and health improvement we make can suffer the same argument (we survived for years with lead paint! Asbestos has been used in a ton of buildings and we are still here!)
Of course, not every safety improvement is worth it. Some risk is acceptable when the gains are high. I just think it is important to be realistic about the risks when we are talking about the benefits.
I was quite surprised because her normal play involves taking care of her baby dolls.
At 5, now they mostly get along fine. Unless they get in her toys. Then it's bodyslam time.
I used to teach kids for many years, and I noticed the "helicopter parents" tended to have more mischievous children, presumably because these kids rarely feel intrinsically motivated to do anything (it's always coming from the parents).
The problems is that as parents we often just group all kids together in how we treat them. They think it's either one way or the other for all kids rather than treating them as individuals with different experiences and different minds.
The one thing I have seen to be true amongst all my peers children is that if you talk to them and treat them like adults, they are much more likely to act like adults at a younger age. That is to say, take into consideration their experience and feelings any time you want to intervene or have an interaction.
*not parenting advice, just imho. apply as you see fit.
That your children do this I think speaks more to your aptitude as a parent and nurturer than human nature in general.
and less so, more peterson spam, as it were.
https://youtu.be/txyGqaeAMbQ?t=27
It turns out their society started looking after their weakest and made decisions based on consent.
Meanwhile, the book just confirms everyone's beliefs not only about children but mankind itself, namely of a Hobbesian/Darwinian/Randian rule-of-the-strongest being the natural state of affairs.
Organisms can become more fit by carving out a specialized niche for themselves where they don't have to compete. Or by becoming more cooperative as a species.
The association with ruthless domination of others can be misleading.
what they said video games would do to us.
Credit: https://twitter.com/allymayn/status/1328448039497867264
It's pretty annoying that so many studies are paywalled.
And naturally, different to a console game, I'm physically pointing the weapon (controller) at the (virtual) target. It's really more fun than it should be ;)
It feels like being a character in a (cheesy) WWII movie.
(Also, I don't think stabbing zombies in the head in 'Walking Dead :Saints and Sinners' will ever get old)
> [the] group with low initial violence “was no higher [don't they mean no lower??] in aggressive behavior than the high initial violence group at the final time point.”
leads to their conclusion
> adolescents who played a high-level of violent video games at an early age did not show more aggressive behavior later in life than those who played fewer to no hours of violent video games at an early age.
(words in square brackets added)
But that's true for more than just multiplayer video games. Sports come to mind. Basically anything involving intense competition and taunting is going to cause a temporary increase in aggressive behavior.
Personally, my take on this is you were seeing and effect; not a cause.
As a kid you MAY have had a common issue expressing loss or disappointment. The game MAY have brought this up, there was always a loser every match. So, your parents MAY have considered this the cause of your inability to properly handle it.
I MAY be wrong. I have no idea about you. But that fits ME perfectly.
I found the thing that brought me out of that was stressful singular competition, fighting, shooting, chess, performance, etc. Things that you excel on your skill not anything you can blame someone else for.
I learned the value in making a plan, executing it, and learning when and why if it didn’t work.
Now as an adult, I find myself more ready to deal with stressful things like dogs fighting on walks, medical emergencies, criminal activity, and things I just see other adults completely lock up on. I think this comes from an inability to process loss and stress.
1.) You underestimate how uncomfortable and annoying resulting environment is for everyone in the household.
2.) "My brother and me fought" typically have consistent aggressor and removal of game is often action design to protect the consistent victim.
3.) Removal of game is logical consequence. If parent simply tolerates asshole behavior in that situation, the kid has no motivation to even try self control. It amounts to enabling where parents see issue, but tolerate it and the issue grows and grows.
If does not study at all the actual issue most of those who lived with excessive gamers (whether kid or adult) have. Meaning, annoying aggression right after playing and verbal abuse toward household members because they dare to exist if same flat where he lost the match.
In case of gaming, people in the same householde are getting that despite not having much choice. It is also much more frequent - dedicated gamers play hours and hours every day.
Another aspect with soccer is that really only few people can do overnight, so again, the bad behavior due to sleep deprivation is less likely to happen. If course it can happen if you party while night or something.
These logistical differences can make big difference in terms of how annoying the hobby is for those who have to put up with people like your friend.
I have spent many hours playing games and I used to regret that, but looking back I had fun with friends and was still able to get good grades and stay active.
I would take games over TV any day!
The only scenarios where I think they're beneficial is when they're enjoyed with friends (preferably in-person), or for the elderly to help with hand-eye coordination and keeping their minds active and busy.
I think this focus on hyper-productivity as some form of ideal is a sad way of approaching life and self-worth.
You can always pursue less productive outlets when you have a job.
This is also true of: (recreational) sports, reading, social interaction, and probably the majority of recreational activities. The entire point is to have fun, because having fun is important.
Not strictly true. Games are fun because they are a learning experience. Boredom is the result of having learned all that is learnable from a thing, and frustration is the result of continually failing to learn from a thing. In this sense, all games are teaching or honing skills, just ask anyone who's finished Getting Over it With Bennett Foddy.
You may argue that games teach "worthless" skills, but I would say the same is true of many hobbies and, moreover, not everything valuable is valuable because it can be put on a resume.
The digital resources that don't cost you money also allow you to build things and think through things you otherwise couldn't. This is Minecraft's big appeal. You can't necessarily cut down the trees in your real yard, build structures without permits, and so on.
Games with online social elements also present similar benefits to hanging out with people. If you're fighting monsters with a group, you may talk about all sorts of things in your downtime.
Even if (war) video games were to be made “gorier”, bloodier, more brutal one still doesn’t experience losing someone, re-building a life in a country that has been bombed to ruins, or dealing with the aftermath such as physical wounds or mental trauma.
The entertainment is designed to make you feel good and make you feel like soldiers are overall good heroes.
> Author Disclosure Statement: No competing financial interests exist
> Funding Information: No funding was received for this article.
Of course, that didn't translate to any real life loss of empathy (I don't think), but it was interesting how quickly the game desensitized my regard of fictional humans so that I stopped seeing them as anything of value but rather an enemy/monster to be unquestioningly destroyed.
What year is this from where Caucasian is still used? And northwest of what country? I guess US since the authors are from there?
Original article is behind a paywall. -1
Simple fact is we have far more evidence to prove the Earth is not flat and yet there are those that still insist in going against all the evidence in the World. This will be no different.