Video Game Violence - Podcast 1

It's a duel: How do violent video games affect kids?


http://www.npr.org/2011/07/07/137660609/its-a-duel-how-do-violent-video-games-affect-kids

• Supreme Court last week overturned case to ban sale of violent video games to children


• Reason being that they have no real effect on children


• Scientists disagree/looking at same evidence, different prespectives


• Test is done on college students, one group playing violent video games while other doesn't.


• Measure how each student in the two different groups feel


• You can't give young college students guns to shoot eachother so...


• They measure emotional responses by showing violent pictures(such as a man shoving a gun down another persons throat)


• Findings: Violent Video Games make the brain respond lesss to violent images


• Particular scientist also made students blast eachother with the most unappealing sounds possible (chalkboard scratching, dentist drills, syrens)


• He states that the more "numb" they were by playing video games, the more aggressie they got with an extent of the sounds


• Bushman believes that violent video games desentisize people.


• Chris Ferguson believes differently, although same evidence is looked at:


• Minor acts of aggression discussed, murderous streak argument completely diminished.


• Many of the games do have morally objective material, we mistook our moral concerns and then assumed that moral objectivity is directly harmful.


• Brian Bushman: Playing violent video games will not turn you into a psychotic killer, but they will desensitize you and make you act more aggresively towards your family and peers.
  
  

Findings are interesting and so is study but findings are not conclusive and the editors don't explore either side but rather present it for the audience to judge