Study: Violent Video Games May Rewire Teen Brain

http://cbs5.com/health/local_story_332200804.html

I was always into strategy and simulation.

I wonder if this is why our nation is so susceptible to Bush's fear?

I appreciate it because I think that there is some impact on young kids. I also think parents have a role. I think that Hill should prove the effects and then make a campaign to make parents aware and more active in what kids are selecting for video game play.

So quit pushing the issue. Hillary/Joe are just playing out to ignorami soccer moms and NASCAR dads...and people who eat up all that they say as brilliance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversy

There's an unjust war going on and our civil liberties are still at risk.

I'm still waiting for someone to tell me why I should support a Hawk who voted for the Patriot Act...

I'm not a Hill and Joe fan but I appreciate this measure. Kids are out of fucking control. They think life is what they watch on the tube.
Kids are exposed to this shit earlier and earlier...they will be running the world soon. That frightens me.

No they're not. They're just fine. You are overreacting and not really using proper examples.

The kids are allright.

Teach your children well and don't worry about the rest.

George and anyone else who wanted to support the insane attack on Iraq for profit and geopolitical influence never played any video games. Do you honestly think someone who has (as I have since I was 5...Atari 2600...) played video games their entire life (some quite violent) could not be a professional, take care of his family, serve his country, and be a well-educated pacifist?

I'm quite allright although I do dislike the spare tire and balding that I have developed...that's genetics though.

The kids are allright.

There will always be some bad kids from poor parenting or simply their own poor decision making.

a very large percentage of friends. I do blame the parents 99.9% but there are some influences that can't be denied. Not finishing school, playing games all day...out all night, dropping out or getting kicked out, crazy. Even the school is bewildered.

Is this magically connected to video games or do these kids (what age? H.S.? College?) just need a swift kick in the kulo? (not to be taken literally!)

Or could these kids be the same amount that drop out every year? Could it be something more than video games as the culprit? Apathy? Lack of responsibility?

Just out of curiousity, and nothing to do with the topic, what does it matter what color the kid is?

That may be the real issue. But the kids goes to an all white affluent school in Alpharetta GA. People assume when I talk about him he's a black kid...cuz I'm black. I'm like nope. He's one of y'all. People stereotype black kids with bad...down here in GA.

The TV was not a baby sitter and neither is the X-Box. The blame inevitably comes down to the parents (like me) to punish or restrict their kids activities.

The kid would rather play video games than go to school...no more video games for him. Lock the machine up until attendance (and grades) improve. Kids are tough to control, especially teens, but cutting them off (allowance or taking away something vital...as small as TV or as large as booting them out to make their own living) is a hell of alot easier than enforcing some neigh impossible rules. If parents don't have time or money to take care of their kids, then maybe they better question that good old Republican values and an economy that calls for two working parents (no sexism here...I'd love to be a house-dad!) Sounds like some serious coddling going on with them thar 'Publican teens...maybe it's ARMY TIME!

An the note of race in America, funny how things become scapegoats and 'problems' are had when white kids in middle America (or middle class America) start acting up.

That was absolutely BRILLIANT!

Nice discussing this issue with you...

X

Strange comment.

The video game playing=susceptable to violence is getting old.

Many of us have played violent video games. Many of us are still peaceful. The science just doesn't add up.

34 subjects were studied. 34 people are hardly representative of the population at large.

Can anyone tell me why Hillary used the primitive part of her brain in voting to invade another nation? Did she, perhaps, play too many video games as a child?

:eyes:

It's the idea that some quick cultural fix will solve the problem that I find idiotic.

It's a little more complicated than:

"Him play video game. He bad. Very bad. Will kill people."

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversy

This is a topic where Wikipedia is untrustworthy. Gamers
are far too over-represented among Wikipedian editors for
an article on this topic to have any credibility. And it
flies the flag of non-credibility right at the top of the
banner on the right of the article that states that it is
part of the Wiki project on censorship.

Tesha

i see the effect. there is way more to it than a mere game though. it filters thru so many things kids g3t today. the games are just one more thing. but it does all base off the parent and what is created in the home. my kids play military games, star war games. all these are aggressive or kill but they are different than the grand theft or adult oriented games. there is a difference. same with the shows kids are allowed to see. but ultimately, it is the morals, thought, creation of environment that a parent establishes in the home. it depends on the constant conversation that is in the home. the examples of behavior.

these games will not hurt, damage or cause a negative on children if a parent is doing the job.... so i hate to challenge a parent that allows a 10 yr old to play grand theft auto. yet.... what i have found is, the parent that generally.... generally allows the children to play grand theft auto is not doing the other part of the job that will allow the child a perspective in life of compassion ect... and learning.... in becoming a better person???? not real sure on what i am saying here.

generally i find it is the parent that does not have a handle on the child, that allows the child to play these games.

if a parent is present and connected to the child i do not see an adverse effect. if there is one i would guess the parent would recognize and take appropriate steps.

my 11 yr old looks at those games and rejects them as play. i do not have to deny him. he does not want them. does not see them as "fun".

It's nothing more than a political campaign for Hillary. A bad one also, because any law she gets passed will almost certainly get ruled unconstitutional just like all the state laws have. Studies have shown that before they started enforcing the ratings, 90 percent of kids who played M rated games got them because their parents bought them. Kids don't have cars, they can't drive, so it is almost always the parents who buy the games. So basically if this law is passed, it will have basically no effect until it gets ruled unconstitional. For Hillary, this isn't about education, this is about political pandering.

Joe on the other hand thinks he is on a moral crusade though. He actually tried to get a complete ban on Mortal Kombat 12 years ago(not just for kids but for adults also). At least he has loosened his position since then, but I find it funny that all the Senators who are speaking out against violent video games (Lieberman, Clinton, Santorum) all voted for the Iraq war.

I wonder how they would react while reading Stephen King, watching a Horror Movie, or even listening to Hip Hop or Rock with violent/vulgar lyrics.

So did the teenagers commit any violent crimes afterwards or show a propensity for doing so... NO.

Once again, the BS patrol pushes a stupid issue based on ignorance and displaying a complete lack of priorities.

There has to be some expalantion for young people being complete assholes. I think their parents have no patience to be parents. Their attention span is to short to teach the children good behavior and to enforce those lessons because their own brains were fried in the 70s and 80s by long hours in front of the TV.

and we are just getting older...

Young folks do what they want. Always have.

If you mean support of the Bush admin by young folks...I just don't see it. Then again, I live in a major urban center. The only major problem I see is a lack of information for the kids on the MSM.

"complete assholes". That generational gap has been going on for centuries. It isn't new since the invention of TV, movies, video games, or any other technology.

...I think it is different now.

"Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation. He recounts the decency and regularity of former times, and celebrates the discipline and sobriety of the age in which his youth was passed; a happy age which is now no more to be expected, since confusion has broken in upon the world, and thrown down all the boundaries of civility and reverence."
Johnson: Rambler #50 (September 8, 1750)

I emphasized the date of this quote, if you wish, I could go back further, to how Greek and Roman Philosophers and historians regarded the youth of their day.

Its important to point out that all ages of folks, from all generations, were hell-raisers when they were kids and teenagers. The problem is that they seem to forget, when they get older, just how BAD they were, nostalgia for some lost "golden age" that simply didn't exist, seems to be the best example of this. Whether it was the parents of over 80 years ago, who listened to that black music in swing clubs(not related to todays swing clubs ;)). The daredevils and bikers of the late 40s and 50s, or the free love, "drugs kick ass" youth of the 60s, the baby boomers. Its not any different today, kids back in the 1960s, as an example, were addicted to LPs and TV, nowadays, its CDs, DVDs, Video Games, etc. The tech is different, the reason behind it is not(youth rebellion).

is the number of single-children now. Many are spoiled in ways that were unthinkable when I was young.

Now kids get a big birthday party EVERY YEAR! I think I had two when I was a kid - one at 6 and one at 16.

Also, kids no longer have "free-play". Everything's structured - soccer, playdates, etc. Kids just don't hang out as a group, unsupervised, and thereby miss out on learning a lot of socialization skills.

But blaming videogames is silly. That being said, I also have no objection to voluntary labelling.

Is there an explanation for older people being complete assholes?

but anytime you learn a skill your brain is being rewired. Youth makes the rewiring last longer, and maybe really young kids shouldn't be exposed to excessive violence. But we knew that, didn't we?

Not nanny-statism if one wants to go all 9 yards on the issue.

Even though most of such studies fail to actually show any real correlation between violence and video game input even in small children: See Wiki link above. (Of course letting a three year old perform decapitations even in electronic format is an example of piss poor parenting.)

The fact that many politicians are pushing the issue is simply to draw attention away from real issues that are far more relevant issues.

and PLEASE don't tell me this is anywhere near as relevant as the War in Iraq or the dismantling of our constitutional rights.

that these kids play video games...are some of them violent...yes...but they also contain ratings for the parents to let them know that it may or may not be a game suitable for their kids to play...if the parents don't pay any attention to the ratings then it's their fault if their kids get's screwed in the head...

one can wonder how easy it is to manipulate the perspective, the opinion, the action, the votes of a nation whose collective brain is trained to operate on primitive emotions rather than reason, self-control, and concentration.

Childhood is where the adult world view is learned.

In teens who played the violent video game, the MRIs showed part of their brain linked to primitive emotions, such as fear, aggression and anxiety, fired up more than that region in the other group of teens.

The part of their brain linked to reason, self-control, and concentration was far less activated.

Gosh, I grew up on video games, many of them violent. Gosh, I thought the Iraq War was ggrrrrrrrrrreaaaat!!! I believe everything the press says without question! I'm a media drone! Damn Democrats. :sarcasm:

Honestly, it isn't that easy to manipulate the minds of those of us who grew up playing violent video games. It's easy to manipulate the minds of idiots who were born stupid and whose parents never took any initiative to educate them correctly. Video games are not even an issue.

People feel the same emotions after listening to a song that hits particularly close to home, playing a game of football either on the field or in a video game, winning a particularly close race, or anything that elicits and emotional repsonse.

First, that emotion shuts down reason, which is why propaganda and/or political campaigning is built to appeal to emotion. Emotion can be a powerful weapon against reason.

Second, that the culture of competition creates bullies, creates the need to "win" above all, cements the belief in "might over right," (although it's marketed as might = right), and that sporting events are part of that. Does this culture inculcate emotional responses that override reason?

American culture seems saturated with the celebration of power, whether it is power over the world, power over the political process, power on the field, whatever. "My team can beat your team" rules whether the team is a religion, a political party, a sports team, or just an opinion about something.

As an educator, I study brain development. There are documented differences in the brains of people exposed for a significant time to electronic entertainment, whether it be tv, computers, or video games. The brains are wired differently. The more time spent in front of a screen, the less time spent in connection with other people or in physical "doing" (climbing, building, drawing, etc.. The more time spent in front of the screen, the greater the wiring difference. If you look at childhood (especially birth - 4 yrs), you see neural connections constantly made and pruned as the brain customizes itself to the environment. Electronic stimulation through the use of video games, etc. plays a part in that. A part; it's not the whole picture, of course.

As a society, we are spending less and less time with kids, and kids are spending more and more time with electronic babysitters. If you are an adult, the time you spent in front of a video game is likely to be quite a bit less than the average time spent by kids in 2006.

Of course, what happens when the child is not connected to the screen is also important. If the value system of the adults in charge does not include violence as a solution, then a violent video game will have less impact.

That leads me to this question: If we don't value violence, why is our entertainment saturated with it? Why do we crave it on the screen? If we do value violence, why? There seems to be a disconnect between our "primitive" and more evolved selves.

More questions than answers at this point, but I appreciate the opportunity to think about it.

:eyes:

I know for one example, in the renaissance days, the artists learned how to draw and sculpt the human body, by actually spending hours observing it, and then go to a different room and use their memory to recreate what they saw. This developed a whole part of their memory and imprinted the human body's structure into their mind. Art schools today do not do that, and people have to have the model in front of them at all times in order to accurately draw a picture.

If you focus on aggression and violence in images, the brain will develop in those areas, and be especially good at remembering those images.

"While the MRIs showed fleeting changes in the brain, the impact may be greater than science can now measure, Smiga said."

What the researcher is saying here is, "We didn't find the really strong evidence we were hoping for, but we're going to claim that it 'could' be harmful in the long term anyway." In other words, the researcher is admitting (between the lines) that they don't have evidence that fleeting changes in the brain lead to long term changes in the brain, but they really, really wish they did because it would make their study look better.

It reminds me of the Bush administration claiming that, "SOME scientists say that global warming is a myth."

These researchers hooked some kids up to electrodes and recorded vitals after the fact. The subjects had just played games and there were probably residual adrenalines/endorphins in their systems. Duh

I'd like to kill all the people who think violent games affect me.

This is especially true of children and teens whose brains are naturually still developing.
This is why non drug (or nutritional/herbal) therapies can work in treating mental illness. Our experiences, including the virtual experiences of video games, computer, television, movies, books, and the thoughts that we dwell on, do affect our brain chemistry. Every experience and feeling leads to our future experiences and feelings.
I don't know whether it is good to ban teens or younger from playing violent video games, but it something for parents to consider before buying a particuliar game for their child or in their balance of activites.

As much as we like to think the world is taking a turn for the worse, it really isn't. Hey, I can be a grouch sometimes (and I'm only 27), but it doesn't seem to me that the kids these days are all that bad. A bit narcissitic, perhaps, but I think that has more to do with a child-centered society, than movies or videogames.

To be honest, whenever I go anywhere, its seems to me that the young kids and teenagers are among the most friendly and polite in society. I mean, I go to the mall, and they hold my door open for me. The other day, I dropped a bag of groceries, and some teenagers helped me pick them up. On the other hand, older people (especially boomer aged people) are among the rudest people around. They never hold doors open, they're always bitching, and the way they treat employees at stores is appalling. Whens the last time you saw a teenager chew out a store manager for something beyond their control?

The kids are okay. Could video games have an effect? Maybe, but not half as much as playing aggressive sports. The biggest assholes, and the most violent people, when I was younger were the sports assholes. The football players, the hockey players....not the nerds playing their violent video games.

People are overreacting. These scientists are speculating wayyyy beyond their evidence...its almost embarrasing. Is that how science is being done in another fields?

On edit: Whats worse..playing video games or being conscripted into the army, like young children were forced to do so many times in our past?

I agree 100% btw :D

I think teens are generally pretty nice.

I blame it partially on tv....everytime I watch Law and Order, or CSI lately, its got some Cocky Kid Killer (tm) on it. Its not realistic. Most crime among youth is pretty minor...or things like grand theft auto, which is non violent.

Kill your T.V.
Severly limit and supervise their computer time.

They'll probably end up as honor students.

n/t

Are violent video games the new Satanism?

Any pol that pushes restrictions on video games is one I would never vote for. Leave the 1st amendment alone.

Than simulated driving.

I'm astounded.

How long does a teen have to play such games to make the changes permanent? How many hours a day for how many days? And ARE the "fleeting metabolic changes" permanent or transient?

Whatever.

It mentions emotional activity. The title and summarizations presented do not appear to be directly related to any of the evidence given in the article.

I'm sure sex causes a rise in it too. And drugs. And loud music. And about a million other things. Why single out video games?

Say, haven't all of those things already been blamed for violent children?

Fucking hosers.

That's why I called it bullshit. I hate crap like this (I'm a researcher). :hi:

Congress needs to be focusing on the violence children witness in their real lives, such as in their homes (child abuse and DV), in their schools (school shootings and gang activity), and in their community. Those issues have far more real, lasting impact on a child's brain development from birth to adulthood than playing video games.

how long did they wait before doing these "simple tasks" after playing the video games? It could be that they were still prepared for their respective game, hence the discrepancy.

I've played video games more than most kids my age, alot of them pretty violent. I also consider myself to be much more passive than most other guys my age (19) In fact, I am one to avoid confrontation, and encourage others to do so as well.

As a side note, I do recall reading an article which indicated that video games improved a child's capability to concentrate for longer periods of time. Odd, after reading this article.

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,64101-0.html
This is another interesting article, which I think brings up a few more points which should be noted.
""There's a culpability here that should be shared by those who are training kids to kill," Thompson said."
This quote is obviously absurd, IMO. Nobody I know has tried to shoot people after playing Counter Strike.

The way I see it is this. If some kid is bullied in school, its better that he goes home and plays a game which has no impact on the real world than for him to go back to school and retaliate in a dangerous way. I simply see video games as a stress relieving entertainment tool. If the child DID go back and commit violent crimes in retaliation to bullying, the school's disciplinarians and the child's parents are to blame, not the video games or their producers.

after eating a twinkie
reading penthouse
getting caught in traffic
having sex
blasting rage against the machine
drink a coke
playing football
getting yelled at by an authority figure...

Ect....

As a former teenage boy, that period was full of stimuli and my energy was always through the roof. Correlation does not equal cause. And we're not even sure what this "cause is". Or how other factors "alter" the brain. Bottom line, video games are not real. They're escapist. I can't remember the last couple levels of Doom or Mega Man(games popular when I was in high school) but I remember getting dumped, getting yelled at by my coach, and taking a car over a hundred mile per hour for the first time. All of these real experiences had a profound and memorable effect on my brain-as opposed to the calculated artifice of 16 bit pixels.