Author: Mohammad Chowdhury (Page 2 of 4)

Bailey, et al. “Kill Pixels, Not People: Exploding the Fake Scientific Consensus on Violent Video Games.” ” By Bailey, Ronald – Reason, Vol. 46, Issue 9, February 2015 | Online Research Library: Questia Reader, Https://Www.questia.com/, Feb. 2015, www.questia.com/read/1G1-396430960/kill-pixels-not-people-exploding-the-fake-scientific.  

Source 1: Magazine

Summary: In 2003, in an article, Iowa State psychologist Craig Anderson and the Ohio State psychologist Brad Bushman claimed that media violence leads to aggression, and in 2007, University of New Mexico pediatrician Victor Strasburger estimated that 10 percent to 30 percent of the violence in society was attributable to media content.  What is the evidence linking media violence leads to aggression? A lot of it comes from experiments in which undergraduates view violent scenes or play shoot-’em-up video games for 15 minutes and then are tested for aggression in various ways. The outcome of the experiments proved that the kids that watched violent scenes showed more aggression. But later in 2013, Stetson University psychologist Christopher Ferguson questioned, “Does Doing Media Violence Research Make One Aggressive?” He and his colleagues then proposed an experiment, “Take 200 children and randomize 100 to watch their parents viciously attack one another for an hour a day, the other 100 to watch a violent television program an hour a day,” they suggest, “then assess their mental health after one month is over.” and these children’s mental health wasn’t even slightly similar.

Reflection:  Our minds worked like sponges when we were kids. Everything we observe at that age, we take it in our brain as the water gets inside a sponge, and when we squeeze the sponge, the same water comes out. Just like that, we act like what we see in others and around us reflect that like the sponge when we were kids.

Quotables: “Ferguson and his colleague, German researcher Malte Elson, invite readers to contemplate a thought experiment as a way to think about the plausibility of the “monkey see/monkey do” theory.”

The investigation, Crime +. Daniel Petric – The Kid Who Killed His Mom And Shot His Dad | Kids Who Kill. YouTube, 14 July, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQH9N5SCDX4.

Source: video

Summary: Daniel  Petric, born on August 24th, 1991 (wellington, Ohio), is a convicted murderer. At the age of 16 (October 20th, 2007), he shot his parents, her mother was killed, and her father survived somehow and later told that he hated Daniel Petric. When he was interrogated for the first time, he made up a story to cover the actual story as he was scared. He said that “he heard from his room his parents arguing. Later his father went in with a gun in their bedroom, and then he heard the sound of a shot. He ran into his parent’s room and saw his mother lying down with blood coming out of her head. His father pointed the gun at him first and then shot himself, saying that “I am sorry, my son.” And this way, they both got shot.” Later on, another person in the video described how this type of false story comes because Daniel wants to act like the victim and don’t take any responsibility. Later on, he testified what he did. In another interview, he was asked about his feelings when he injured his father and later shot his mother to death. He paused and then answered by saying that he was a teenager and he just did it thinking their parents would revive just like in Halo 3 game. 

Reflection: First time, one of my uncles showed me a video of Daniel Petric, how a police officer was going into Daniel Petric’s house scared. He saw his mother and father lying on the side, and he himself playing Halo 3. And when the police called him, he said nitro disturb him as he was on his way to finishing the game. It’s really tragic how playing violent games sometimes make people lose the power to differentiate between real-life and virtual life. It drives people crazy enough to kill their own parents, friends, and others.

Quotables: “did you think you were hurting them or do you think you were killing them…. *Silence*…I didn’t understand that time; there is a difference between knowing and understanding and understanding that I was taking a Human life.”

Publishing, Harvard Health. “Violent Video Games and Young People.” Harvard Health, Oct. 2010, www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/violent-video-games-and-young-people. effects of violent games on young people

Source: Harvard health article

Summary: In its most recent policy statement on media violence, which includes a discussion of video games and television, movies, and music, the AAP cites studies that link exposure to violence in the media with aggression and violent behavior in youths. The AAP policy describes violent video games as one of many influences on behavior, noting that many children’s television shows and movies also contain violent scenes. But the authors believe that video games are particularly harmful because they are interactive and encourage role-playing. As such, the authors fear that these games may serve as virtual rehearsals for actual violence. The Surgeon General on the topic of youth violence made a similar judgment. 

Two psychologists, Dr. Patrick Markey of Villanova University and Dr. Charlotte Markey of Rutgers University, have presented evidence that some children may become more aggressive due to watching and playing violent video games, but that most are not affected. After reviewing the research, they concluded that the combination of three personality traits might be most likely to do an individual act and think aggressively after playing a violent video game. 

Reflection: From my own experience, I have seen how aggressive I get when someone calls me on my gaming time. We are too excited to know what’s going around us. But when I finish the game, I think of myself, ‘why did I even do that?”. It’s literally a priming effect where our nonconscious memory is triggered by what we are doing consciously. 

Quotables:  “These organizations express concern that exposure to aggressive behavior or violence in video games and other media may, over time, desensitize youths by numbing them emotionally, cause nightmares and sleep problems, impair school performance, and lead to aggressive behavior and bullying.”

Mire, Scott, and Cliff Roberson. The Study of Violent Crime: Its Correlates and Concerns. Taylor & Francis Group, 2010. 

Source: Article 

Summary: This article talks about how many studies. Some researchers are concerned that excessive game playing could be a form of addictive behavior, though this is controversial. Some researchers are uncertain about calling gaming “addictive” since problematic gaming may, in some cases, serve as a dysfunctional coping mechanism for people struggling with depression or anxiety. One review of research by the American Psychological Association found that people who played violent video games were very slightly more likely to engage in aggressive behavior. Other studies have found no link between game violence and violent or aggressive thoughts. Like APA member Chris Ferguson, some researchers have even disputed findings connecting games to aggression, saying many of the studies that drew such conclusions had methodological problems. Either way, aggressive behavior is not the same as violence. Many of the people involved in mass shooting incidents seem to be less interested in violent video games than their peers. Psychology professors Patrick Markey and Christopher Ferguson found that about 20% of school shooters played violent video games than close to 70% of their nonviolent peers. Here we learned how many studies came with their conclusion of violent games/ 

Reflective: Video games really mess with the way of thinking of a teenager. After the Parkland shooting, Donald Trump said, “I am hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts” President Obama had a similar question after the Sandy Hook school shooting Newton, Connecticut. I really do believe that many are abandoning reality to find temporary peace in games. Especially violent games to keep their life excited. And sometimes they implement it in their real life. 

Quotables: ‘ The World Health Organization recently decided to add “gaming disorder” to its list of mental health conditions in the update of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), released June 18.’

The first time I was introduced to computer games was at the age of 7. I don’t really remember the name of that game, but it was pretty addictive. I wanted to play it every day for at least half an hour. But at that time, it didn’t affect me that much, and I had a good childhood time without pc games. But later on, at the age of 12, I was really into a  game named GTA vice city, where you have to do the works of robbery, theft, killing, etc., to pass the missions. It was so addictive that I would eat, take a shower, and pray late. Sometimes I used to get angry because someone called me while I was playing the game. Right now, I understand how addictive it is for me at that age. Even at this age, I get addicted to certain games once I start playing for a while.  From that understanding point, I really want to talk about consuming our valuable time and changing our way of thinking. Especially kids and teens as their brain is absorbing more and more ideas at that age. I want to talk about how some people are being left out, and to pass their time and socialize; they put themselves into violent games and many other ways to remove their boredom and isolation. It has been seen in many shooters that they were being left out, abused and to fill that up, they get themselves into violent games, and from that, they get emotionally triggered.  Later they do what they see in their game. It’s like a “monkey sees, monkey do’. To keep me away from games, I try to work on different skills like photography, Adobe illustrator designing, video editing, etc. Besides that, the amount of study I get from college really doesn’t get time for playing games, which is a positive side.  I would tell many people when they get to college, their gaming time reduces significantly.  Some still make time after college and play a good amount of time. If I could keep this up, I don’t have to worry about getting addicted to video games and not wasting my valuable time. Talking about this topic mostly inspires when one of my uncles showed me a video of a boy who killed his whole family, and when the police got there, he was playing a game. That really made me angry. He lost his mind and couldn’t comprehend reality and virtual life playing that game called Halo 3. I really don’t like it when this type of people don’t care about what is happening around the world and putting their heart and soul in something that will probably bring no good to them. I want to talk about why this is happening to us and how we can prevent it.

As a kid, I was curious about this world; we keep asking questions about something we see new. It was the same for me. As a kid, I was mostly interested in my toys, but not playing with them more like how they function. If someone gets me a new toy car, I will play around with it a few days and then, later on, bring a screw to open it up to take the motor out and play with it; for this reason, I had destroyed a lot of toys. I also had a curiosity about riding a bike. I wanted to know how this bike functions and how can I make it go faster. As I learned riding bikes on two wheels when I was two years old, it gave me good speed by 7. I used to watch many martial arts movies, so it played a significant role in inspiring me in martial arts. I couldn’t slow it down or anything, so I would watch those movies many times as it would playback after a few weeks on the TV.  I used to practice martial art and always wondered whether I could learn them or not, but then I also didn’t want to go to any martial arts school. 

I kept on practicing out of curiosity. I used to ride bikes crazy around my area when I was in my country. Ride with my friends, and they wouldn’t be able to keep it up with me. When I learned about the gear systems by the bike I wanted one so much. When I got one, I rode it so much that it showed many problems. I thought I could fix it, and then I was also afraid to cause more problems. So I used to take my bike to a repair shop and observe how they fix it. 

Right now, when I ride a bike for a long time, and I don’t get tired quickly, it feels natural to ride for hours after hours. Now when I have a problem with my bike, I just analyze it and fix it myself. As for martial art, I used to practice basic different martial art movements, and after three years, I have become so much flexible to many styles.  I started understanding the martial art movies how they do the fight choreography. Over the years, out of curiosity, I used to do these things as a hobby; now, these matters feel natural.  Fixing the bike has given me the ability to analyze machines and learn about them, and from martial art it has given me the ability to play many sports and stay fit and slim even if I don’t work out once every three months. That’s why having curiosity is essential because we never know what knowledge will we have and when.