Video games and real-life shooter violence

[Circe]

March 8, 2018: NEW YORK (AP) — In the wake of the Florida school shooting, President Donald Trump is reviving an old debate over whether violent video games can trigger violent behavior....

Trump plans to meet Thursday with representatives from the video game industry. Trump’s recent public comments referencing the “vicious” level of game and movie violence in the context of school safety show that he is eager to explore the issue.

The Entertainment Software Association, the biggest video game trade group, said Monday that it will attend the meeting at the White House.

Trump reopens a seemingly settled video-game debate
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I am boldly trying again to start a discussion on video games and their influence on real violence. Since it's on the headline news today, TV and Internet, and you'd think it wouldn't be too awful or taboo to discuss it ---- though my thread on the topic in Clean Debate Zone a couple weeks ago was deleted. Maybe it will be possible to discuss it on this forum, as it IS current events news.

For instance, Nikolas Cruz did slam his mother against the wall when she took away his Xbox, and the police were called on that occasion. So he was indeed a gamer.

So am I. There are a lot of very violent shooter games now -- I have played one of them for two months now -- and there are also movies that are basically killing violence from opening to end; and novels are breaking all the old taboos, with plot elements that never used to be written: torture, violence against children, an unending obsession by the hundreds with grotesque attacks on women.

Has this had an effect on real violence in society? I fear I'll get banned for asking, but it does seem to me it ought to be possible to discuss this topic in public forums.

 

[mdk]

Blaming video games and movies for violence is an old as the hills scapegoat.

 

[usmbguest5318]

Do shooter video games increase the number of mass killings we are seeing in America?

Google is your friend....

• 2008 -- Violence and Mental Illness
  Are violence and mental illness synonymous, connected, or just coincidental phenomena? This article reviews the literature available to address this fundamental question and to investigate other vital topics, including etiology, comorbidity, risk factor management, and treatment. A psychiatrist who is well versed in the recognition and management of violence can contribute to the appropriate management of dangerous behaviors and minimize risk to patients, their families, mental health workers, and the community as a whole.
  
• 2014 -- Parent and Peer Predictors of Violent Behavior of Black and White Teens
  This study examines the role that parenting and deviant peers plays on frequency of self-reported violent behavior in the 10th grade, while testing race differences in mean levels and impact of these risk and protective factors.
  
• 2016 -- Combining Behavioral and Structural Predictors of Violent Civil Conflict: Getting Scholars and Policymakers to Talk to Each Other
  Large-N studies of civil war overwhelmingly consider the state-specific structural conditions that make conflict likely. Meanwhile, policymakers often ignore these factors and instead search for patterns among the behavioral triggers of violence. This article combines these approaches. I use conflict narratives from the International Crisis Group’s Crisis Watch publications to cross-validate structural analyses of civil conflict and confirm the mechanisms that lead to outbreaks of violence in conflict-prone countries. I then correct for selection bias in the narrative data with an underlying model of conflict likelihood. I find that several indicators thought to be causally related to civil conflict do indeed continue to have an effect after selection. [Note: This study's author, Gibler, wrote the abstract in the first person. I am not Gibler.]
  
• 2000 -- Predictors of Youth Violence
  This Bulletin describes a number of such risk and protective factors, including individual, family, school, peer-related, community/neighborhood, and situational factors.
  
• 2007 -- Mental illness and violence: A brief review of research and assessment strategies. (Literature review)
  This article examines the evolution of thought and research regarding the relationship between mental illness and violence, from studies in the early twentieth century through the more recent MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study. In addition, the article explores the state of knowledge and practices surrounding the assessment and management of violence risk among individuals with mental illness.
• 1994 -- Predicting Violent Behavior and Classifying Violent Offenders
  This paper discusses the classification of individuals as violent persons and the prediction of individualacts of violence. It is based on a review of research reports that implicitly or explicitly define violence as physically harmful behavior carried out by an individual and directed against others. Thus we exclude research on such topics as collective violence (e.g., riots and wars), self-injury (e.g., suicide), and psychological violence (e.g., verbal aggression).
  
• 2003 -- The effects of violent video game habits on adolescent hostility, aggressive behaviors, and school performance
  The first goal of this study was to document the video games habits of adolescents and the level of parental monitoring of adolescent video game use. The second goal was to examine associations among violent video game exposure, hostility, arguments with teachers, school grades, and physical fights. In addition, path analyses were conducted to test mediational pathways from video game habits to outcomes.
  
• 2006 -- Interpersonal Rejection as a Determinant of Anger and Aggression
  This article reviews the literature on the relationship between interpersonal rejection and aggression. Four bodies of research are summarized: laboratory experiments that manipulate rejection, rejection among adults in everyday life, rejection in childhood, and individual differences that may moderate the relationship. The theoretical mechanisms behind the effect are then explored.

A number of things contribute to one's determining to be a mass shooter. I think one'd have to be incredibly weak minded for a video game to causally be among those things. After all, there's a huge gap between being violent and being a mas shooter. One can be all sorts of violent and never become a mass shooter.

 

[evenflow1969]

Blaming video games and movies for violence is an old as the hills scapegoat.

I believe that it very well could be a contributing cause but certainly is not the only one!

 

[Billy_Kinetta]

All things have an effect upon society. Popular entertainment - film, games, books - has skewed the old good guy/bad guy stereotype over the last few decades into a meaningless gray jelly of moral "eeney, meenie, miney, moe".

For mature adults, this is not much of a problem.

For children, especially those raised by society and without active participation by their parents, it causes them to develop moral codes based upon what their fictional heroes decide is right or wrong.

 

[mdk]

Blaming video games and movies for violence is an old as the hills scapegoat.

I believe that it very well could be a contributing cause but certainly is not the only one!

I know I can’t stop throwing turtle shells at people thanks to Mario and Luigi. lol

 

[evenflow1969]

Blaming video games and movies for violence is an old as the hills scapegoat.

I believe that it very well could be a contributing cause but certainly is not the only one!

I know I can’t stop throwing turtle shells at people thanks to Mario and Luigi. lol

You can make light but it does have a contributing factor. Rainbow six, Halo and some of the others are what they are talking about. You have to admit it is pretty strange in this counrty that I can show my kid some one being beheaded but I go to jail if he sees some boobies on TV.

 

[mdk]

Blaming video games and movies for violence is an old as the hills scapegoat.

I believe that it very well could be a contributing cause but certainly is not the only one!

I know I can’t stop throwing turtle shells at people thanks to Mario and Luigi. lol

You can make light but it does have a contributing factor. Rainbow six, Halo and some of the others are what they are talking about. You have to admit it is pretty strange in this counrty that I can show my kid some one being beheaded but I go to jail if he sees some boobies on TV.

The same games/movies are played/watched all over the developed world with seemingly little issue.

 

[Mac1958]

Has this had an effect on real violence in society?

I have no doubt it's a contributing factor, the question is to what degree.

This is a cultural problem, it's all around us, and we're all too willing to overlook and forgive and spin as we continue to lower standards. Video games, movies, TV, music, and obviously the internet are all contributing factors. This is a self-inflicted wound.
.

 

[evenflow1969]

Blaming video games and movies for violence is an old as the hills scapegoat.

I believe that it very well could be a contributing cause but certainly is not the only one!

I know I can’t stop throwing turtle shells at people thanks to Mario and Luigi. lol

You can make light but it does have a contributing factor. Rainbow six, Halo and some of the others are what they are talking about. You have to admit it is pretty strange in this counrty that I can show my kid some one being beheaded but I go to jail if he sees some boobies on TV.

The same games/movies are played/watched all over the developed world with seemingly little issue.

They do not emerse themselves in it for the hours per day we are doing here. It has an effect every where to varying degrees depending on time spent and the feeding of opposite phylosophy..I am not an advocate of getting rid of these games. I am an advocate on self restraint on amount of time playing them and a little bit more parental involvment in restricting play and teaching right or wrong.

 

[depotoo]

I saw a clip of some video game on tv the other day. The graphics made it so real you would think it had been filmed. That is not like MARIO. There was no fantasy quality to it. I do believe if you have a sick mind playing those type games, it can be an influence. To most, no, to the mentally ill, very possibly. It was disturbing to watch.

Blaming video games and movies for violence is an old as the hills scapegoat.

I believe that it very well could be a contributing cause but certainly is not the only one!

I know I can’t stop throwing turtle shells at people thanks to Mario and Luigi. lol

 

[Billy_Kinetta]

Blaming video games and movies for violence is an old as the hills scapegoat.

I believe that it very well could be a contributing cause but certainly is not the only one!

I know I can’t stop throwing turtle shells at people thanks to Mario and Luigi. lol

You can make light but it does have a contributing factor. Rainbow six, Halo and some of the others are what they are talking about. You have to admit it is pretty strange in this counrty that I can show my kid some one being beheaded but I go to jail if he sees some boobies on TV.

The same games/movies are played/watched all over the developed world with seemingly little issue.

Yes. The rest of the world is at peace.

 

[The Derp]

Violent movies and video games are enjoyed by people around the world, yet only in the US do we have an epidemic of mass shootings.

So it's not the culture.

It's the guns, stupid.

 

[The Derp]

I saw a clip of some video game on tv the other day. The graphics made it so real you would think it had been filmed. That is not like MARIO. There was no fantasy quality to it. I do believe if you have a sick mind playing those type games, it can be an influence. To most, no, to the mentally ill, very possibly. It was disturbing to watch.

They have the same video games like Call of Duty; the same movies like Death Wish; and the same TV shows like The Walking Dead everywhere else in the world. Yet only in the US do we have an epidemic of mass shootings.

 

[Billy_Kinetta]

Violent movies and video games are enjoyed by people around the world, yet only in the US do we have an epidemic of mass shootings.

So it's not the culture.

It's the guns, stupid.

WARNING - Making parts.

And no guns even.

 

[petro]

Violent imagery has reached a level of vileness not seen in the past. From blood and brain splatter to secret codes in popular games to open rape scenarios.
Add that many have lost the separation of fantasy vs. reality as they soak every waking minute into social media sites that damage young minds before learning proper social interaction.
The creators openly admitted it.
Now a host of school lockdowns nationwide as threats are made against schools on social media by sociopath users.
Who the hell would have even entertained a threat decades ago?
My opinion is it is a contributing factor of many.

 

[mdk]

Blaming video games and movies for violence is an old as the hills scapegoat.

I believe that it very well could be a contributing cause but certainly is not the only one!

I know I can’t stop throwing turtle shells at people thanks to Mario and Luigi. lol

You can make light but it does have a contributing factor. Rainbow six, Halo and some of the others are what they are talking about. You have to admit it is pretty strange in this counrty that I can show my kid some one being beheaded but I go to jail if he sees some boobies on TV.

The same games/movies are played/watched all over the developed world with seemingly little issue.

Yes. The rest of the world is at peace.

Did I say that? Nope, sure didn't.

 

[The Derp]

Violent movies and video games are enjoyed by people around the world, yet only in the US do we have an epidemic of mass shootings.

So it's not the culture.

It's the guns, stupid.

WARNING - Making parts.

And no guns even.

And this is supposed to prove, what?

Do you not think people have the internet in other countries?

Do you not think people in other countries play video games and watch movies?

Grow up.

 

[Circe]

All things have an effect upon society. Popular entertainment - film, games, books - has skewed the old good guy/bad guy stereotype over the last few decades into a meaningless gray jelly of moral "eeney, meenie, miney, moe".

.... it causes them to develop moral codes based upon what their fictional heroes decide is right or wrong.

I like your grey jelly idea. I've somehow been watching a lot of violence movies lately -- or the first part, anyway, I send them back. They have this pattern: There's this strong guy, and bad guys hurt his dog, or daughter, or wife, or girlfriend. So now it's okay to kill them all, and he does that for the rest of the movie.

The moral code here is vigilanteism, which is becoming the theme of more and more movies, and all the games. They are bad guys, so you get to kill them, no societal forces need apply. It is true that society no longer enforces any sort of justice, especially executions. And that society cannot and does not protect people from violent bad guys.

Still, this is a pretty simplistic moral code being acted out in movies and games and even books --- women buy most books, so now we have a gazumpteen vigilante women in novels. Even some movies --- three I can think of without trying.

I can see how this simple idea: they are bad guys, so I get to kill them --- could start to be acted on in real life. It's an idea being shown dramatically everywhere.

 

[The Derp]

Violent imagery has reached a level of vileness not seen in the past. From blood and brain splatter to secret codes in popular games to open rape scenarios.
Add that many have lost the separation of fantasy vs. reality as they soak every waking minute into social media sites that damage young minds before learning proper social interaction.
The creators openly admitted it.
Now a host of school lockdowns nationwide as threats are made against schools on social media by sociopath users.
Who the hell would have even entertained a threat decades ago?
My opinion is it is a contributing factor of many.

The same violent games and movies we have here, they have in every other country around the world. Yet we are the only country with mass shooting epidemics. So what makes us different from France or Israel or the UK, who gets the same movies, tv shows, and video games we get?