Although there is broad scientific consensus that virtual violence increases aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, there has been little public action to help mitigate children’s exposure to it.4 In fact, the single broadest legislative action taken by the state of California, which made it illegal to sell video games labeled for mature audiences to minors, was struck down by the US Supreme Court. It is important to note, however, that the ruling was not based on the absence of data linking media violence to aggression. Rather than rule on scientific merit, the Court invoked first-amendment protection for the games insofar as the Court construed their primary purpose to be to confer ideas and social messages.5 Currently, there is no federal authority governing content and ratings, which are issued by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, compliance with which is optional for industry.
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It is true that an experimental, real-world study that links virtual violence with real-world violence has not been conducted. Such a study will never be undertaken for several reasons, including the fact that actual violence is, fortunately, so rare that an exceedingly large sample size would be needed, and inducing and observing actual violence by manipulating subjects would never pass ethical scrutiny. But experimental linkages between virtual violence and real-world aggression have been found. For example, a recent experimental study conducted in the real world motivated parents to change their children’s media diet by substituting prosocial programs in place of violent ones. This study found decreases in aggression and improvement in overall behavior.8Emphasis added, naturally; and, yes, that's the American Academy of Pediatrics claiming "broad scientific consensus" on an issue that they then admit, in the same statement, hasn't actually been scientifically studied.
I call bullshit, but I'm far from being the only one.
From Kotaku:
The implied premise of the new statement, that there is a causal or even correlative link between violent games and long-term aggressive behavior, has been repeatedly debunked over the last several decades, though some reports do allege otherwise. Many of the testing methods used to measure aggression in scientific studies are only able to examine the short-term effects of violent media; there have been very few longitudinal studies that look at how violent games and movies affect people over an extensive period of time. As a result, the research on violent games’ long-term effect on real-life behavior is inconclusive at best.
The AAP’s statement cites a number of psychologists who have spoken out against violence in games. Its most cited source, Brad Bushman, has shown that subjects who play violent games experience short-term boosts in antisocial behavior. The AAP’s statement, in turn, notes that “the linkage between virtual violence and aggression has been well supported and is robust.”
In fact, reports demonstrating a causal or even correlative link between media and long-term behavior do not exist, which the same AAP statement notes later on: “It is true that an experimental, real-world study that links virtual violence with real-world violence has not been conducted.” Short-term boosts in angry behavior or feelings are not the same as aggravated assault, a conflation that appears misleading to experts on media psychology who spoke to Kotaku today.
The lead author of the AAP statement did not respond to multiple requests for comment by press time.
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On the Huffington Post, Christopher Ferguson, Stetson University professor of psychology, rigorously critiqued the AAP’s new report. He described the new statement as “strangely defensive and frustrated” and “distort[ing] the research evidence.” Ferguson refers readers to a 2013 letter written to the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Violent Media. There, 230 media scholars, psychologists and criminologists spoke out against the APA’s “current policy statements on media violence including video games as misleading and alarmist.” And, again, three years later, here we are.Recent high-profile news events notwithstanding, the world isn't actually any more dangerous now than it was ten years ago; in fact, if anything, it's less so. You're more likely to be struck by lightning than injured in a terrorist attack. If you're worried about how the news coverage might be contributing to "cruel world syndrome" in your kids, try telling them the truth about the world they live in: that they live in the safest period in human history.
From Slate:
As troubling as the recent headlines have been, these lamentations need a second look. It’s hard to believe we are in greater danger today than we were during the two world wars, or during other perils such as the periodic nuclear confrontations during the Cold War, the numerous conflicts in Africa and Asia that each claimed millions of lives, or the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq that threatened to choke the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf and cripple the world’s economy.
How can we get a less hyperbolic assessment of the state of the world? Certainly not from daily journalism. News is about things that happen, not things that don’t happen. We never see a reporter saying to the camera, “Here we are, live from a country where a war has not broken out”—or a city that has not been bombed, or a school that has not been shot up. As long as violence has not vanished from the world, there will always be enough incidents to fill the evening news. And since the human mind estimates probability by the ease with which it can recall examples, newsreaders will always perceive that they live in dangerous times. All the more so when billions of smartphones turn a fifth of the world’s population into crime reporters and war correspondents.
We also have to avoid being fooled by randomness. Cohen laments the “annexations, beheadings, [and] pestilence” of the past year, but surely this collection of calamities is a mere coincidence. Entropy, pathogens, and human folly are a backdrop to life, and it is statistically certain that the lurking disasters will not space themselves evenly in time but will frequently overlap. To read significance into these clusters is to succumb to primitive thinking, a world of evil eyes and cosmic conspiracies.
Finally, we need to be mindful of orders of magnitude. Some categories of violence, like rampage shootings and terrorist attacks, are riveting dramas but (outside war zones) kill relatively small numbers of people. Every day ordinary homicides claim one and a half times as many Americans as the number who died in the Sandy Hook massacre. And as the political scientist John Mueller points out, in most years bee stings, deer collisions, ignition of nightwear, and other mundane accidents kill more Americans than terrorist attacks.No, we don't need legislation that limits children's access to entertainment, or to reality. We just need to get a fucking grip. At some point, you really do have to decide that you're not going to live your life in fear, and stop worrying about the possibility of horrible things happening when they're less likely than lottery jackpot wins. It sounds simple, and it is.