from Matt Peckham, PC World

Game Myths Debunked: Grand Theft Childhood

Myth: The growth in violent video game sales is linked to the growth in youth violence — especially school violence — throughout the country. So claims a new book on the verge of publication by Drs. Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson, co-founders and directors of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media. With $1.5 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Justice, the pair set off in 2004 on a research odyssey to determine the effects of video games on young teenagers. What they found, according to the book’s promotional site, “surprised, encouraged, and sometimes disturbed them.”

The real risks, say Olson and Kutner, are subtle, and not just about violence, gore, and sex. Games don’t affect all kids the same, and some children are at “significantly greater risk” than others.

Some of the book’s eye-opening “facts” and “myths,” from the promotional site:

Fact: Video game popularity and real-world youth violence have been moving in opposite directions. Violent juvenile crime in the United States reached a peak in 1993 and has been declining ever since. School violence has also gone down. Between 1994 and 2001, arrests for murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assaults fell 44 percent, resulting in the lowest juvenile arrest rate for violent crimes since 1983. Murder arrests, which reached a high of 3,800 in 1993, plummeted to 1400 by 2001.

Myth: Girls don’t play violent video games like Grand Theft Auto.

Fact: Our survey of more than 1200 middle school students found that 29 percent of girls who played video games listed at least one M-rated game among the games they’d “played a lot” during the previous six months. One in five specifically listed a Grand Theft Auto game. In fact, among these 12- to 14-year-old girls, the Grand Theft Auto series was second only to The Sims in popularity.

Myth: In August 2005, the American Psychological Association issued a resolution on violence in video games and interactive media, stating that “perpetrators go unpunished in 73 percent of all violent scenes, and therefore teach that violence is an effective way of resolving conflict.”

Fact: The allegation that “perpetrators go unpunished in 73 percent of all violent scenes” is based on research from the mid-1990s that looked at selected television programs, not video games.

Myth: School shooters fit a profile that includes a fascination with violent media, especially violent video games.

Fact: The U. S. Secret Service intensely studied each of the 37 non-gang and non-drug-related school shootings and stabbings that were considered “targeted attacks” that took place nationally from 1974 through 2000. (Note how few premeditated school shootings there actually were during that 27-year time period, compared with the public perception of those shootings as relatively common events!) The incidents studied included the most notorious school shootings, such as Columbine, Santee and Paducah, in which the young perpetrators had been linked in the press to violent video games. The Secret Service found that that there was no accurate profile. Only 1 in 8 school shooters showed any interest in violent video games; only 1 in 4 liked violent movies.

Game Couch conducted an interview with Dr. Olson in late February. A few of the choicer responses from the interview:

Until now, the most-publicized studies came from a small group of experimental psychologists, studying college students playing nonviolent or violent games for 15 minutes. It’s debatable whether those studies are relevant to real children, playing self-selected games for their own reasons (not for cash or extra credit!), in social settings, over many years. But media reports and political rhetoric often ignore that distinction…

The most-published researchers have built their careers around media violence. Their studies were designed under the assumption that violent video games are harmful, which dictated the questions they asked and how they framed their results. Media violence is just a small part of what we do, so we could look at the issue with fresh eyes and no agenda…

One of the biggest draws of GTA [Grand Theft Auto] seems to be not the violence but the open environment and array of choices: “You can be a good guy and a bad guy at the same time.” Every child will play the game differently…

It may take a new generation of researchers and advocates, open to both pros and cons of video games (and who’ve played video games themselves!), to start truly productive discussions…

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