Original Bitmob op-ed: http://bit.ly/Obq3Nj
Original CNN article: http://bit.ly/Obq4Rd
My response to Steven Sukkau's post ballooned into it's own post, so here it is. Full disclosure: I like playing video games and I watch porn.
These two "psychologists" have, in penning this article, engaged in a betrayal of the principles that guide their field. They have taken a very small and predjudiced sample and stated causation between two things where only a weak correlation has been shown in very few studies. And those studies, when subject to serious scrutiny, were shown to have been flawed, often not accounting for the consumption of other violent media, family history of physical violence or problems managing anger, etc. Put bluntly, this is a hack job meant to encourage page views. I'll take it apart, piece by piece.
"Increasingly, researchers say yes" – Which researchers are those? Would you care to perhaps name the researchers, their studies, and the respected peer-reviewed journals in which they were published? No? Then you don't have a point.
"Stories about this degeneration are rampant" – TWO examples are provided. Two people out of the millions who play video games with no ill side-effects whatsoever. I know there are other people who've damaged personal relationships due to an addictive personality that manifested itself in video games, but they used an inflamatory word like "rampant" and then provided two examples. I'd expect at least a dozen different cases in which serious health problems or murderous rampages occurred. Also, neither of these two examples involve American boys, teenagers, or young men. They didn't even bother to pull out the Columbine reference. *eye roll*
"Research into this area goes back a half-century" – Fifty years. is that all? That's the blink of an eye. You'll notice the research they point to doesn't have a thing to do with media consumption. It has to do with rats pleasuring themselves until they starve to death, the implication being that boys, teenaged males and young men have no more complex a thought process than a lab rat. They then jump back to human addiction, without explaining at all what the link between the rats lab behavior and "this new kind of human addiative arousal" is supposed to be. They're hoping you'll make the connection on your own without them having to make one at all.
CDC Study about porn users – this study does not appear to refer to age as a factor. Also, I cannot find this study anywhere, outside of a Men's Health article that makes reference to it. This makes me think the study wasn't about pornography use, but these facts about pornography were buried somewhere in a study about something else. I can't even locate the study on the CDC website. Where is this study, one of the only references in the article?
The Annual Review of Public Health study – this oft-referred-to study discusses exposure to all violent media, not just video games. In the abstract itself it refers to the fact that no longitudinal studies have been performed on the subject. This study is six years old. Why not refer to a more recent study? Perhaps because a literature review performed in 2010 by the Australian Government Attorney-General's Department (http://bit.ly/ObopuZ) found that
The most significant effect size was found for VVG exposure and aggressive behaviour: r = 0.24 (small-moderate). When corrected for gender and prior aggression however, the effect is reduced to r = 0.15 (small)…controlling for other risk factors (such as depression or family violence) reduces the effects to near zero.
The review also finds that reserarchers have a tough time deciding on an accepted definition of video game violence, and what entails "aggression". What's more is that hypothetical situations posed to players of violent video games in which they choose the "aggressive" response doesn't mean that they would behave aggresively if the situation presented itself in real life, and it doesn't mean that they will commit more real-world violence. Study after study shows that real-world violence in the Western world continues to decline, as does teen sexual activity. By the way, the teen sexual activity is according to a CDC study – one that you can actually find with a simple Google search. http://1.usa.gov/Obomze
"Young men…are being digitally rewired" – first of all, this sentence is stupid. Humans aren't digital. I know what they meant. They're trying to be cute. Science isn't cute. Also, you can't make broad claims like this without some research to back it up. I mean, you can. But you forfeit the right to call yourself a scientist.
"Guys are also totally out of sync in romantic relationships" – when has this NOT been true? Seriously. This is a wholly subjective statement. Here's the thing: they could have easily pointed to any number of interview studies that show that women feel they're not "in sync" with their male partners in any number of aspects of their romantic relationships. But I can almost GUARANTEE you that all of those studies would show that an overwhelming number of women feel that way about their men. And I bet if you asked the men, they'd feel the same way about their female partners. And I bet the studies would yield similar results, regardless of the decade you took them in. Most male/female couples aren't in sync. It ain't cause of porn, or video games, or TV. It's evolutionary biology. It's about 60 million years of male primates wanting to impregnate as many mates as possible contending with a few millenia of societally imposed monogamy. And it's not that I think monogamy is a bad thing. I'm happily married myself. It just is what it is. Marriage is hard and takes work and communication and compromise. Choosing to work on your relationships is what makes them successful. You aren't going to have a lot of friends if you choose to play video games or watch porn instead of hanging out with people and talking to your girlfriend. But that's not the fault of the games or the porn.
"We are in a national, and perhaps global, Guy Disaster Mode" – the inanity of this wholly unsubstantiated claim aside, can I propose that what it means to be a guy is just, ya know, changing, and some people in the Old Guard are just confused and frightened about it?
Like I said at the beginning of all this, if you took a social science class in college, you know that this article isn't academic or scientific. This is punditry disguised as science, the authors are more concerned with getting attention than advancing the discussion, and CNN are so desperate to regain even a fraction of the market share they've lost to MSNBC and Fox News, that they'll publish anything they think will draw audiences to their website.
/end rant
Thetwo "psychologists" have, in penning this article, engaged in a betrayal of the principles that guide their field. They have taken a very small and predjudiced sample and stated causation between two things where only a weak correlation has been shown in very few studies. And those studies, when subject to serious scrutiny, were shown to have been flawed, often not accounting for the consumption of other violent media, family history of physical violence or problems managing anger, etc. Put bluntly, this is a hack job meant to encourage page views. I'll take it apart, piece by piece.
"Increasingly, researchers say yes" – Which researchers are those? Would you care to perhaps name the researchers, their studies, and the respected peer-reviewed journals in which they were published? No? Then you don't have a point.
"Stories about this degeneration are rampant" – TWO examples are provided. Two people out of the millions who play video games with no ill side-effects whatsoever. I know there are other people who've damaged personal relationships due to an addictive personality that manifested itself in video games, but they used an inflamatory word like "rampant" and then provided two examples. I'd expect at least a dozen different cases in which serious health problems or murderous rampages occurred. Also, neither of these two examples involve American boys, teenagers, or young men. They didn't even bother to pull out the Columbine reference. *eye roll*
"Research into this area goes back a half-century" – Fifty years. That's the blink of an eye. You'll notice the research they point to doesn't have a thing to do with media consumption. It has to do with rats pleasuring themselves until they starve to death, the implication being that boys, teenaged males and young men have no more complex a thought process than a lab rat. They then jump back to human addiction, without explaining at all what the link between the rats lab behavior and "this new kind of human addiative arousal" is supposed to be. They're hoping you'll make the connection on your own without them having to make one at all.
CDC Study about porn users – this study does not appear to refer to age as a factor. Also, I cannot find this study anywhere, outside of a Men's Health article that makes reference to it. This makes me think the study wasn't about pornography use, but these facts about pornography were buried somewhere in a study about something else. I can't even locate the study on the CDC website. Where is this study, one of the only references in the article?
The Annual Review of Public Health study – this oft-referred-to study discusses exposure to all violent media, not just video games. In the abstract itself it refers to the fact that no longitudinal studies have been performed on the subject. This study is six years old. Why not refer to a more recent study? Perhaps because a literature review performed in 2010 by the Australian Government Attorney-General's Department (http://bit.ly/ObopuZ) found that
The most significant effect size was found for VVG exposure and aggressive behaviour: r = 0.24 (small-moderate). When corrected for gender and prior aggression however, the effect is reduced to r = 0.15 (small)…controlling for other risk factors (such as depression or family violence) reduces the effects to near zero.
The review also finds that reserarchers have a tough time deciding on an accepted definition of video game violence, and what entails "aggression". What's more is that hypothetical situations posed to players of violent video games in which they choose the "aggressive" response doesn't mean that they would behave aggresively if the situation presented itself in real life, and it doesn't mean that they will commit more real-world violence. Study after study shows that real-world violence in the Western world continues to decline, as does teen sexual activity. By the way, the teen sexual activity is according to a CDC study – one that you can actually find with a simple Google search. http://1.usa.gov/Obomze
"Young men…are being digitally rewired" – first of all, this sentence is stupid. Humans aren't digital. I know what they meant. They're trying to be cute. Science isn't cute. Also, you can't make broad claims like this without some research to back it up. I mean, you can. But you forfeit the right to call yourself a scientist.
"Guys are also totally out of sync in romantic relationships" – when has this NOT been true? Seriously. This is a wholly subjective statement. Here's the thing: they could have easily pointed to any number of interview studies that show that women feel they're not "in sync" with their male partners in any number of aspects of their romantic relationships. But I can almost GUARANTEE you that all of those studies would show that an overwhelming number of women feel that way about their men. And I bet if you asked the men, they'd feel the same way about their female partners. And I bet the studies would yield similar results, regardless of the decade you took them in. Most male/female couples aren't in sync. It ain't cause of porn, or video games, or TV. It's evolutionary biology. It's about 60 million years of male primates wanting to impregnate as many mates as possible contending with a few millenia of societally imposed monogamy. Oy.
"We are in a national, and perhaps global, Guy Disaster Mode" – the inanity of this wholly unsubstantiated claim aside, can I propose that what it means to be a guy is just, ya know, changing, and some people in the Old Guard are just confused and frightened about it?
Like I said at the beginning of all this, if you took a social science class in college, you know that this article isn't academic or scientific. This is punditry disguised as science, the authors are more concerned with getting attention than advancing the discussion, and CNN are so desperate to regain even a fraction of the market share they've lost to MSNBC and Fox News, that they'll publish anything they think will draw audiences to their website.
"Increasingly, researchers say yes" – Which researchers are those? Would you care to perhaps name the researchers, their studies, and the respected peer-reviewed journals in which they were published? No? Then you don't have a point.
"Stories about this degeneration are rampant" – TWO examples are provided. Two people out of the millions who play video games with no ill side-effects whatsoever. I know there are other people who've damaged personal relationships due to an addictive personality that manifested itself in video games, but they used an inflamatory word like "rampant" and then provided two examples. I'd expect at least a dozen different cases in which serious health problems or murderous rampages occurred. Also, neither of these two examples involve American boys, teenagers, or young men. They didn't even bother to pull out the Columbine reference. *eye roll*
"Research into this area goes back a half-century" – Fifty years. That's the blink of an eye. You'll notice the research they point to doesn't have a thing to do with media consumption. It has to do with rats pleasuring themselves until they starve to death, the implication being that boys, teenaged males and young men have no more complex a thought process than a lab rat. They then jump back to human addiction, without explaining at all what the link between the rats lab behavior and "this new kind of human addiative arousal" is supposed to be. They're hoping you'll make the connection on your own without them having to make one at all.
CDC Study about porn users – this study does not appear to refer to age as a factor. Also, I cannot find this study anywhere, outside of a Men's Health article that makes reference to it. This makes me think the study wasn't about pornography use, but these facts about pornography were buried somewhere in a study about something else. I can't even locate the study on the CDC website. Where is this study, one of the only references in the article?
The Annual Review of Public Health study – this oft-referred-to study discusses exposure to all violent media, not just video games. In the abstract itself it refers to the fact that no longitudinal studies have been performed on the subject. This study is six years old. Why not refer to a more recent study? Perhaps because a literature review performed in 2010 by the Australian Government Attorney-General's Department (http://bit.ly/ObopuZ) found that
The most significant effect size was found for VVG exposure and aggressive behaviour: r = 0.24 (small-moderate). When corrected for gender and prior aggression however, the effect is reduced to r = 0.15 (small)…controlling for other risk factors (such as depression or family violence) reduces the effects to near zero.
The review also finds that reserarchers have a tough time deciding on an accepted definition of video game violence, and what entails "aggression". What's more is that hypothetical situations posed to players of violent video games in which they choose the "aggressive" response doesn't mean that they would behave aggresively if the situation presented itself in real life, and it doesn't mean that they will commit more real-world violence. Study after study shows that real-world violence in the Western world continues to decline, as does teen sexual activity. By the way, the teen sexual activity is according to a CDC study – one that you can actually find with a simple Google search. http://1.usa.gov/Obomze
"Young men…are being digitally rewired" – first of all, this sentence is stupid. Humans aren't digital. I know what they meant. They're trying to be cute. Science isn't cute. Also, you can't make broad claims like this without some research to back it up. I mean, you can. But you forfeit the right to call yourself a scientist.
"Guys are also totally out of sync in romantic relationships" – when has this NOT been true? Seriously. This is a wholly subjective statement. Here's the thing: they could have easily pointed to any number of interview studies that show that women feel they're not "in sync" with their male partners in any number of aspects of their romantic relationships. But I can almost GUARANTEE you that all of those studies would show that an overwhelming number of women feel that way about their men. And I bet if you asked the men, they'd feel the same way about their female partners. And I bet the studies would yield similar results, regardless of the decade you took them in. Most male/female couples aren't in sync. It ain't cause of porn, or video games, or TV. It's evolutionary biology. It's about 60 million years of male primates wanting to impregnate as many mates as possible contending with a few millenia of societally imposed monogamy. Oy.
"We are in a national, and perhaps global, Guy Disaster Mode" – the inanity of this wholly unsubstantiated claim aside, can I propose that what it means to be a guy is just, ya know, changing, and some people in the Old Guard are just confused and frightened about it?
Like I said at the beginning of all this, if you took a social science class in college, you know that this article isn't academic or scientific. This is punditry disguised as science, the authors are more concerned with getting attention than advancing the discussion, and CNN are so desperate to regain even a fraction of the market share they've lost to MSNBC and Fox News, that they'll publish anything they think will draw audiences to their website.
/end rant