Here’s some “interfaith” violent-video-game fearmongering for you — happy holidays!

Should the absence of good science be reason enough to keep kids from playing violent video games? Photo by Flickr user scottfidd.

Just in time for holiday gift-unwrapping, two members of the Interfaith Social Justice Committee for Temple Emanu-El and St. Martha Catholic Church — in Sarasota, Florida — have penned a scaremongering editorial urging parents to keep kids from violent video games at all costs: “Do not purchase them, return those received as gifts, destroy or give away any currently owned; and deny the right to play them wherever you live.”

I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog scanning the studies that suggest both positive and negative consequences from playing violent video games. Most recently, I looked at a Swedish study that said, decisively, the jury’s still out on violent gaming and its effect (if any) on young people. So why do Frank Schaal and John McGruder say parents should keep their kids from video games at all costs?

Well, they start with throwing science and reason right out the window:

More detailed studies of video games and their psychological effects are warranted, but as responsible adults, can we afford to wait? There may be no more causal relationship between violent video games and aggressive behavior than there was between a moral crisis and the hip gyrations of Elvis in the 1950s; then again, 1950s research about cigarettes was also inconclusive.

That’s … sort of a good point. But their missive goes quickly downhill from there:

We know these facts: Award-winning video games such as “Grand Theft Auto,” thrive on murder, theft and destruction. Gamers increase their chances of winning by making a virtual visit to a prostitute who can be subsequently mugged.

… Actually, that isn’t true. It’s true that GTA allows you to do this, if you choose, but it isn’t required to do so in order to advance the game. In the scenario they describe, you break even at best; prostitutes in GTA, as in real life, cost money. (And let’s not even get into the idea that visiting a sex worker is somehow wrong. It’s illegal, yes, but that’s another matter.)

And high school students who committed mass murders were heavy gamers; some even customized the game “Doom” to eerily match the crimes they committed.

… That’s also not true. According to the Secret Service, “Only 1 in 8 school shooters showed any interest in violent video games; only 1 in 4 liked violent movies.” In fact, school shooters are much less interested in video games and violent video games than their peers. At least one study has suggested that juvenile criminals might be less likely to harm people if they’re busy playing video games instead, getting their aggressions out virtually rather than in reality.

Schall and McGruder cap their nonsense with this frightening line of argument:

The consequences of this pollution contribute to the degeneration of society. Bullying, fighting, gang warfare, and other aggressive crimes, including murder, are committed by young people, concomitantly spreading destruction and devaluing the gifts of life and freedom. Inevitably, many youths are incarcerated, often with long sentences and always with life-altering ramifications. In Florida alone, close to 100 men are now serving life sentences without parole for crimes committed when they were young.

While it’s true that juveniles are going to prison for crimes they committed, there’s still no evidence that it’s video games that put them there. For those who did enjoy a game or two, there were many other factors — from upbringing and trauma to mental health and desperation — that were much more prominent in these criminals’ lives. Even teen-killer “expert” Phil Chalmers — who thinks video games do contribute to delinquency — says it’s one factor among many.

So, no, parents don’t need to worry. They don’t need to start burning video games like they’re books or records. They can let their kids play games, keep an eye on them, and relax.

Study: it’s probably not the violent video games making your kid aggressive

A new Swedish study finds no reason to blame video games for kids’ anger and aggression. Photo by Flickr user mdanys.

Those Swedes sure do things differently, what with the neutrality and the guaranteed school placement for young kids and the crappy science top-ranked science programs.

Maybe that explains how they looked at the same research that led American scientists to believe video games are harmful to kids, and come out with the completely opposite conclusion.

Here’s what happened: the Swedish Media Council looked at more than 100 studies of kids, violent video games, and aggression published between 2000 and 2011. At first blush, their findings look the same: they found a statistically significant link between violent gaming and aggressive behavior.

However, they don’t think the games have anything to do with the behavior:

Many of the studies use different methods to measure aggression, many of which lack a clear connection to violent behaviour.

In addition, a great deal of the research exploring causal links between violent computer games and aggressive behaviour “suffer from serious methodological deficiencies” and don’t provide sufficient evidence to establish a causal relationship.

The few studies that have attempted to examine other causes of aggression found that factors, such as poor physical health or family problems, can explain both violent behaviour and a propensity to play violent computer games.

(Emphasis mine.)

According to a statement from the council, “there is no evidence that violent computer games cause aggressive behaviour … If research can’t provide any simple answers about how games make children aggressive, perhaps we adults should stop judging the games children play based on whether they are violent or not.”

Those wacky Swedes. Who’s going to believe that, right?

I’d love to do a more detailed analysis of the study (PDF) and its methodology, but unfortunately, I don’t speak Swedish. And, admittedly, I am skeptical of studies-of-other-studies because I feel as though they can replicate the same biases of the original studies. In this case, that doesn’t seem to have happened.

So, who is the Swedish Media Council, then? In America, a group like that would be an independent firm, maybe something like Common Sense Media (which, by the way, has come out against violent video games for kids.) “The Swedish Media Council is a center for information on children and young people’s use of media such as the Internet, computer games, film, and TV. The Media Council is part of the Swedish Government’s Ministry of Culture and located in Stockholm.”

So they’re a government-funded agency. And they’re saying violent video games don’t hurt kids. And the folks saying this come from a country that puts some of the biggest emphasis on science, research, and innovation in the world.

I dunno. Should we believe them?

Shocking study makes teen gamers gamble, finds that their brains similar to gamblers’!

Ghent University researchers studied teen gamers’ brains — and compared them to gamblers’. Photo by Flickr user eyeSPIVE.

In dozens of studies, scientists have speculated about what’s going on in kids’ brains when they are playing video games. Numerous studies have attempted to give us this information, but with no solid results. Recently, researchers at Ghent University in Belgium took a direct approach: they rounded up 154 14-year-olds who play video games, and put them in an MRI machine to check things out.

What they found was interesting: teens who play plenty of video games have an enlarged portion of their brain associated with rewards. This portion, called the ventral striatum, is also often larger in gamblers and others who engage in compulsive behavior.

Of course, we don’t know for sure whether playing video games enlarges this part of the brain, or whether people whose brains are more developed in this area tend to gravitate toward gaming. To find that out, you’d have to take a bunch of non-gamers, make them play video games for years, and see if that portion of their brain got bigger. And it’s hard to get permission from parents to subject kids to potentially brain-altering activities. In a scientific context, anyway.

You would think that during such a study, the scientists would put kids in the MRI machine while they were playing video games to track, you know, how their brains looked.

They didn’t. They had the kids play two games in which they made bets on certain outcomes. In other words, they made them gamble.

So they started with the idea that video gaming might be somehow related to addiction or compulsive behavior, similar to gambling. They picked a bunch of kids who play video games, made them gamble, and — lo and behold — found that their brains were like gamblers’ brains!

Anyone else see the problem here?

Then you get headlines like:

“Children who love video games have brains like gamblers.”

“Study: Video games may change brain”

At least the LA Times didn’t join in the hysteria: “Frequent gamers have brain differences, study finds.” There, was that so hard?

What are parents to think, reading these headlines? They probably picture their kids pulling the lever on a slot machine or doubling down at the poker table, losing everything they have. But there are so many other studies suggesting the benefits of video games — and then there are the numerous stories from players themselves. Do gamblers talk endlessly about how gambling saved their lives? Some might. But it seems unfair to compare the two pastimes, even if there are a few similarities there. It’s certainly unfair to study gamers’ brains — but make them gamble while you do it.

Until we study their brains while they are playing video games, we aren’t getting anywhere.

Study: heavy metal makes you suicidal, after all

In 1990, Judas Priest was sued for allegedly inspiring the suicides of two teen fans. They were cleared of all charges. Was the judge wrong? Photo by Flickr user Fernando Catalina Landa.

By now, the old moral panic over heavy metal and suicidal behavior is so old-hat that it’s almost laughable, right? Bands like Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne were taken to court over allegations that their music had inspired suicide attempts among fans, but the judges in those cases found them innocent of all charges. Heavy-metal researchers like Jeffrey Jensen Arnett have gone deep into the subculture to find out why some kids love metal so much — and found that the music provides solace for all kinds of listeners. Sure, depression, suicide, and dark music sometimes go hand in hand, but it’s usually the depression that came first.

Not so fast, according to University of Melbourne researcher Katrina McFerran. She has just published a new study claiming heavy metal causes depression and suicidal feelings in listeners. (Editor’s note: the link to the news item about the study lists it as number 666! Coincidence?) Since the actual study appears to be unavailable, we’re going to just have to go on what it says in the press release:

“The mp3 revolution means that young people are accessing music more than ever before and it’s not uncommon for some to listen to music for seven or eight hours a day,” she said.

“Most young people listen to a range of music in positive ways; to block out crowds, to lift their mood or to give them energy when exercising, but young people at risk of depression are more likely to be listening to music, particularly heavy metal music, in a negative way.

“Examples of this are when someone listens to the same song or album of heavy metal music over and over again and doesn’t listen to anything else. They do this to isolate themselves or escape from reality.

“If this behavior continues over a period of time then it might indicate that this young person is suffering from depression or anxiety, and at worst, might suggest suicidal tendencies.”

Whenever I like a song — whether it’s a heavy metal song or not — I do tend to listen to it a lot. I think this is pretty normal among people who passionate about music (as opposed to folks who simply have a passing interest in it). I clearly remember listening to Duran Duran’s “Save A Prayer” and Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” on endless loop. And, yes, I’ve done this with plenty of heavy-metal songs, too. It wasn’t to block anything out. It was because the song touched me.

Now, McFerran may have a point. Some kids who are already depressed may also listen to the same piece of music over and over, to find comfort in it. But she suggests that this behavior on its own is worrisome and might mean a kid is at risk of suicide. There are already well established warning signs of teen suicide, and “listening to heavy metal on endless loop” isn’t one of them. Generally, people listen to music to make them feel better. Even if it doesn’t seem on the surface that they feel better, it’s keeping them from feeling worse, and that’s an important distinction.

What I’m getting at is: there may be a correlation between depression, suicidal feelings, and love of heavy metal (although fans of any kind of music are certainly susceptible), but that correlation doesn’t suggest that heavy metal is causing those feelings — or that it’s making them worse. But McFerran is suggesting it does, and that’s like suggesting Bic Macs cause bank robberies simply because some bank robbers have eaten them every day for several weeks. (If anything could be said for such eating habits, you could say it causes you to make documentaries. Right?)

At any rate, I suspect McFerran is seeing things a bit backwards — and putting out information that might frighten, rather than assist, parents.

Video games: Saving lives, soothing depression, tickling brains and quieting the nag (since 1972)

Gamers behind the Mario Kart wheel. Photo by Flickr user RonaldWong.

In the arcade, being gay simply didn’t matter; it wasn’t a place of sex or relationships, so it didn’t matter that I was wanting to be romantically involved with guys as opposed to girls. All that mattered there were good matches and getting better.

So I did.

And that saved me from my desire to die. While I was improving myself in the arcade, either with Guilty Gear or at home with Smash (and my local train station had a gc with smash set up in front of it to attract customers to the game shop there). My time out of school was mostly dedicated to improving myself.

This may sound sad, spending so much time fixated on games. But at the time I was so depressed it was hard to hang around people. So what did this fixation do for me? It occupied my mind. During those days I started considering how to improve my ky or Bridget in GG, how to improve my use of Link’s Boomerang usage and so on. It stopped me thinking about death all the time. It saved me from going insane.

– Rowan Carmichael, How Games Saved My Life

Ashly Burch (blogger at Hey, Ash, Whatcha Playin’?) created How Games Saved My Life last month as a way to gather stories from gamers that show video games’ positive side. Already, she’s collected dozens of stories and she’s poised to attract many more, now that she’s gained attention from sites like Kotaku and Ars Technica.

I heard many similar stories while conducting interviews for Backward Messages. Perhaps not every gamer has such a story, but I suspect many, if not most, do. These aren’t stories that many kids share with their parents — these stories remain especially hidden when the parent/child relationship is most fractured, and this is when kids most need games as an outlet. Fellow gamers and parents can come to a site like this, browse around, and hear something similar to what their own child might be too shy or scared to talk about.

These stories are powerful. Beyond that, they reveal an incredible amount of self-awareness — a self-awareness many adults do not give kids credit for possessing. Those who would try to keep video games, including violent games, out of the hands of minors on the grounds that they are too violent make the assumption that kids who love these games are a blank slate, not considering what they’re playing. On the contrary, kids seek these games out like medicine. They know what they need, and know they are healed by it. And we need to listen to them.

Burch’s site comes at a time when the news wires have been jumping with reports about video games. For example, TodaysTHV.com, a news station in Arkansas, recently reported, “Study links teen depression risk to hours spent with online media.” Look at that, and then look at Rowan’s story. Then check out this quote from one of the study’s authors, Erick Messias:

“We need to do a better job of understanding how the Internet and video games, whether violent or not, affect young people. For many, the Internet and video games are the only form of social interaction they have; they are their primary source of communication,” says Messias. “We fully don’t understand the consequences of this kind of stimulation, but we hope this work will lead to improving the screening process in adolescents.”

Correlation is not causation. Teens turn to video games as a source of solace from problems, including depression. The video games aren’t the problem — they’re part of a coping strategy, even a recovery process. That’s what needs studying.

Over at Forbes, blogger David M. Ewalt posits, “Do Video Games Make You Smarter? Maybe Not.” In it, he analyzes a new study that questions prior research showing that video games improve mental acuity and performance. One problem with such studies, he says, is, “gamers perform better on cognitive tests because they’ve heard that gamers perform better on cognitive tests.” Well, true. This is a complicated issue, to be sure — and games have many benefits beyond what’s shown in scientific tests.

Amusingly, the Deseret News recently reported that “Negative, nagging parents cause kids to play video games more, not less.” No ironies there; of course kids who feel henpecked, particularly over their favorite pastimes, are going to turn to those pastimes as an escape. Actual dialogue about specific video games and their appeal to a child is always going to be more effective.

Readers, did a video game save your life, or the life of someone you know? Share stories in the comments.

Oslo: Modern Warfare didn’t lead Breivik to shoot

Alleged Oslo gunman Anders Behring Breivik.

People read newspapers if for no other reason than to understand human behavior. We read for the crimes, the celebrity shenanigans, the “fluff” pieces. When a massive tragedy happens, we want to know why it happened — and who was behind it.

That’s one reason reporters work so hard to find out details about someone like Anders Behring Breivik, who allegedly bombed downtown Oslo and then shot dozens of people, mostly children, on nearby Utoya Island July 22. Before the attack, Breivik penned a lengthy manifesto describing his goals and how he planned to get there. Within it are plenty of juicy details about his life, his tastes, and his philosophies.

A handful of articles this morning focus on Breivik’s use of video games, including one from Kotaku:

“I just bought Modern Warfare 2, the game. It is probably the best military simulator out there and it’s one of the hottest games this year. … I see MW2 more as a part of my training-simulation than anything else. I’ve still learned to love it though and especially the multiplayer part is amazing. You can more or less completely simulate actual operations.”

No doubt, some will see his statement as proof that violent video games are no good. That they inspire murderous rampages. People will see what they want to see in such statements — but that doesn’t make it true.

By the time Breivik got around to buying and playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, he was already pretty far along in his planning process. He was thinking in terms of wanting a “training-simulation.” Playing the game didn’t make him want to go on a shooting spree; wanting to go on a shooting spree made him want to play the game.

This is what people mean when they say correlation is not causation. You have someone who killed nearly 80 people in the biggest mass shooting in history. And you have someone who was fond of a military-style shooter game set in future versions of Afghanistan, Russia, and Rio de Janeiro, among others. That’s a correlation. But in Breivik’s own words, the plot came first; the game came later.

Perhaps of more concern is his use of World of Warcraft to separate himself from society:

Breivik says he spent three years writing the manifesto. In the first year, he played World of Warcraft “hardcore”, living “very ascetic” and in isolation. “I feel that this period was needed in order to completely detach myself from ‘the game,’ my ‘former shallow consumerist lifestyle’ in order to ensure full focus on the matters at hand.”

Many WoW players do wind up disassociated from day-to-day life if they spend the bulk of their time gaming. This is a hazard, and one worthy of attention. It’s worth noting that Breivik did this deliberately; whether other WoW players do probably varies from person to person.

Nevertheless, it’s likely that anti-violent-game pundits will use this opportunity to rail against the dangers of such games, particularly for young people. And indeed, some already are. Not 72 hours after the massacre, “the Australian Christian Lobby [is calling] for games to be banned if the ‘violence is excessive or gratuitous.’”

Australia’s Minister for Home Affairs, Brendan O’Connor, has reviewed existing research on violent video games. He saw Breivik’s mental state as a much more likely culprit for the shootings than the video games he favored:

I think it really points to, of course, a person who — clearly there is something wrong with this person to sort of cause such devastation in Norway. But I’m not sure that the argument goes that as a result of watching a game you turn into that type of person. I think there is something clearly intrinsically wrong with him.

It’s probably also worth noting that many gamers don’t believe that playing shooters appreciably improves their marksmanship. In addition to playing MW2, Breivik also joined a shooting club, though it’s unclear how much in-the-field target practice he’d undergone in addition to his gaming. I find it unlikely that the game alone would help him learn to wield a gun.

Could the game have inspired Breivik’s rampage — and could it have helped him pull it off? What do you think?

Video games soothe soldiers’ post-war nightmares, but make kids take risks. What?

A new study suggests that playing “risk-glorifying” games can lead teens to engage in riskier activities, such as illegal street racing. But the study is short on proof. Photo by Flickr user osakasteve.

When soldiers come home from war, they don’t leave it behind on the battlefield. It invades their nights, sparking nightmares and insomnia. A recent talk by Jayne Gackenbach of Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, Canada, at the Game Developers Conference shared something interesting. Soldiers who played combat-based video games such as Call of Duty reported sleeping better at night. Not only that, but when the nightmares came, those soldiers were more likely to feel like they had some control over their dreams, producing more positive outcomes and happier mornings.

Low gamers [those who didn't play games, or engaged in casual gaming] reported more incidents of feeling helpless against an aggressive, violent enemy. Gackenbach theorises that playing violent games while awake may serve as a sort of “threat simulator,” a way of conditioning the mind to better cope with intense, dangerous situations when they arise in nightmares.

Interestingly, she added that many of these soldiers would bring their war games with them when they went overseas — a fact other video-game writers have corroborated. It’s possible that the soldiers who love their combat games are wired a little differently than the “low gamers,” and thus these games provide them more relief than they would provide others. But for whatever reason, violent games are helpful to this group of soldiers.

This suggests that there is some benefit to the playacting and exploration that takes place in video games, including the most disturbing and worrisome. Plenty of studies have tried to suggest that high-intensity video games are bad influences for kids (and we’ll get to another one of those in a moment), but those studies seem to throw catharsis theory, and the psychological benefits of role-playing, straight out the window. However, when you talk to actual gamers about their use of actual games in actual day-to-day life, as Gackenbach did, you hear time and time again how beneficial it is for gamers to be able to go to these dark places in a safe, fictionalized way.

That’s why this study (PDF), by Peter Fischer, et all, is such a head-scratcher. In it, the researchers found that teens and young adults who are exposed to media that “glorifies” risk (a term they fail to define) are more likely to copy that behavior, particularly if the media in question is interactive, as with video games.

There are a number of issues with this study, the predominant one being that this isn’t an actual study Fischer and his colleagues conducted on actual teens. Instead, they dug through research that other people did, on media influences, which happened to include the data they were looking for. A handful of the included studies were his own. The problem with this is, for the most part Fischer couldn’t really control the methods involved; he couldn’t select his subjects, he couldn’t ask his own questions or design his own experiments. Sure, he supposedly got information on 80,000 subjects, which is nothing to sneeze at, but he didn’t interact with most of them.

The second problem is, his study is based on the assertion that risky behavior is on the rise among teens. However, his “proof” is given in a number of single-year statistics, rather than multi-year figures that demonstrate an increase. His exception is a statistic that shows binge-drinking is on the rise among German teens. However, if you look up actual reports on those figures, you find that teen drinking has actually decreased in Germany. Yes, a handful (8 percent) of German boys confessed to drinking 5 or more drinks in one sitting at least once per month, reflecting an increase in such behavior. But the reason given for this behavior wasn’t media influence, but peer pressure and social lubrication. As it turns out, most of the binge-drinkers live in rural areas, suggesting boredom is one of the biggest factors of all.

While citing statistics, Fischer also mentions a handful of anecdotes in which people reproduced stunts on the outlandish series Jackass (which is thoroughly disclaimered during each episode), as though these stories represent a more widespread problem.

I’m going to focus on Fischer’s discussion of video games, since that’s a topic I cover frequently in this blog. His group looked at racing-based video games, where players are encouraged to drive fast as well as do stunts, mimic reckless driving, etc. for points or other in-game rewards. After playing racing games, some studies found that players then showed more willingness to drive recklessly. In a computer-generated vehicle simulation. How this is substantially different from a racing game is beyond me. It in no way represents how they would behave once they got behind the wheel of a two-ton steel machine.

Fischer turns his attention to another study, which showed that teens who played racing games were also likely to get behind the wheel when they were too young to do so legally. In one of Fischer’s own studies, he found that kids who played racing games reported being in fender-benders more often (and thought more highly of real-life reckless driving, though it’s not clear whether they actually engaged in them). This is getting closer. However, it’s also possible that these kids just loved crazy driving, and that playing games allowed them to do so safely, lowering their risk of trouble behind the wheel. To bear this theory out, you’d have to take two groups of kids who play racing games and engage in reckless driving, take the video games away from one group, and show that their driving became more conservative.

In fact, one of Fischer’s other studies suggests that the problem isn’t gaming exactly, it’s the fact that certain kids think of themselves as reckless drivers. These kids happened to be the same ones who played racing games. They also took more risks when out on the roads. Fischer argues that this self-image comes from playing so many games, but doesn’t provide any evidence to back that up. Remember, correlation is not causation. Maybe these kids’ parents always told them what reckless boys (and girls) they were. We don’t know. There’s no reason to assume it’s the games.

In closing, Fischer talks about the “over 2,000 annual, illegal episodes of street-racing [that] have been observed by police departments in California alone, and nationwide U.S. studies [that] report significant increases in fatal street racing crashes over the last few years.” He blames this on “media and car advertising,” even the Speed Racer cartoon. Granted, illegal street racing has been a problem almost since the invention of the accelerator pedal, but it’s hard to see how recent instances can be blamed on the media (especially since the activity predates most of those media). Street racing tends to be a community activity. That is, kids become involved with a group that race illegally for fun, and they participate in the racing to connect with the group. It’s a social activity, like any other, though with admittedly bigger risks than many other social activities.

To go back to a point I made earlier, the bigger bugaboo here seems to be plain old teenage boredom. Teens who grow up with a lot of free time and not enough supervision are likely to explore the things which excite them, both in simulations (video games) and real life. If you look at kids who engage in real-life recklessness, there’s little to suggest that they got the idea from a game or a TV show, aside from isolated incidents. You can’t prove that video games cause reckless behavior by asking kids to say how they feel. You have to look at their actual day-to-day behavior, compare that to their media consumption, then take that media away and see how their day-to-day behavior changes. I haven’t seen a study yet that does that.

After all that, I want to ask: did you ever do something risky because you tried it in a video game, or saw it on TV or in a movie? If so, what was it, and what happened? Share your stories in comments.