Just when you thought all the uneducated, naive and ignorant politicians and various other do-gooders had said all they could on the topic of violent video games, out crawl more to jump on the bandwagon. This time its MP Keith Vaz, who has asked (and been denied) the House of Commons to hold a debate over the effects of video games, citing a recently published and biased study as his main form of evidence. The study is funded by the Center for successful parenting whose mission statement is as follows. “Our culture used to protect the innocence of our children. Today our children are constantly exposed to sex and violence. Our vision is to move parents, leaders in health, government, business, education, public safety, and other vocations to action by changing our culture to protect children from unhealthy media in all formats.” According to Dailytech the group has already published literature about the pure evil gaming incites, based on their interpretation of the studies findings.
The TWO week study, which then attempts to apply its findings to explain behavioural traits in long term gamers, involved 28 total participants, which anyone with a degree in demographics will tell you is simply inadequate and a gross misrepresentation of the population. The study shows, that low and behold, just like any other life activity, violent video games create changes in the brains activity. No suprise there really, or that the rest of the results are a mixture of maybes, mights, possiblies and more than likely’s. Dr Wang MD, of Indiana University, who headed the project states that the study is representative of the effects of long term gaming, something I find very hard to fathom from the limited study.
Someone really needs to stop these groups from wasting money funding research projects that yield results completely non applicable to the argument. While everyone is focused on the fact that video games stimulate the brain, there is very little evidence to support the fact that these effects are negative and create issues for the player. Very few people sit and play violent games for 10 hours a day, especially younger teens, and if they do, well there parents have some answering to do, not them. To make these studies even semi-believable and to give them some merit amongst die hard gamers (if thats possible even), the study needs to incorporate all forms of media, not just video games. As long as lazy parents worldwide have someone or something to blame for their brats behaviour they will, and video games seem the perfect scapegoat. In relation to gamers outside of parental control, there is no evidence, even if certain parts of the brain are more active when playing violent games, that this will ever translate into a greater propensity for violence when interacting with the real world.
Mr Vaz, havent you got anything better to campaign and debate over, surely there are homeless people in your district or roads, schools or parks that need attention. Even an orphanage for stay cats would be a better way to spend your time campaigning for, unless of course it was also funded by violent video game developers, hell bent on providing the cats with violent games so they can amass an angry violent feline race.
