Video Games and Violence…

On the Media had a great piece this week entitled, “Sex, Drugs, and Video Games” about the relationship between video games and violence. They say:

Lawrence Kutner has authored a new book suggesting violent video games do not create violent children.

As the parent of three young children and a Director of Technology at an all boys school, this story feels good. Do you know of opposing research?

Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mytripsmypics/2455932465/

Tags: Blogging · Leadership · Learning · On My Mind · On the Media

1 June // May 5, 2008 at 2:06 pm

hey alex, most of the studies i’ve read say the same thing. video games *do not* create violent people.

however, there is some evidence that violent video games or movies stimulate people (not surprising)… so if you are *already predisposed* to aggression or violence, a violent video game might stimulate you to act it out. this phenomena only happens to a very small minority of people though. i can find some studies if you’re interested!
2 Ann Oro // May 10, 2008 at 8:01 pm

Alex:

I was at a conference in Princeton, NJ about a week ago. We saw John Black speaking about video games and learning. We also saw Craig Anderson Department of Psychology, Iowa State talking about violent video games and if they are desensitizing. I don’t know if you’ll get much out of it, but a bunch of people live blogged. The Live Blog is posted at Kevin Jarrett’s blog. You can click on the link to get there.

I also saw this piece from an Australian website pointing to video games not necessarily a bad thing.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,23670311-5014117,00.html

Hope you find something useful.
Ann

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