Gov't funded study on effects of videogames passed.

Reality's Fringe

Reality's Fringe

CAGiversary!
Feedback
8 (100%)
Here we go! Thank you Mrs. Clinton:

On Friday, The Children and Media Research and Advancement Act (CAMRA) was passed by the U.S. Senate. The bi-partisan act introduced, in part, by Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and First Amendment hater Joseph Lieberman (D, sometimes R, but currently I -CT), is designed to research the effects of media on children.

The research will be headed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, if the study finds that video games do in-fact harm the children, the government will be free to impose its will on the industry.

One of the major roadblocks to imposing legislation on the video games industry is that every superior court judge that's dealt with the issue has stated that games are protected under the First Amendment and, furthermore, that there is no scientific proof video games are harmful. By proving the latter, these pols hope to overcome the former.
 
So anybody wants a man sevant for hire in Japan?

No really I will sleep outside in my skin tight Ninja costume 24/7 sweep your area, murse your children, and even clean your toilets. All I ask is plane tickets for my return, a small amount of cash for my lunch and a elevated futon for hanging my neck at nights.

Still no really our tax money is going towards finding out that videogames is the missing link between Comic books, Board games, and film. Speaking of dumb da dumb da dumb deded Hillary visits Vector/Cutco a huge pyramid scheme:whistle2:#
 
Maybe I'm the only one here, but I actually welcome a study. We say here that the effects of video games are minor on children, many in the government say otherwise. Instead of arguing, let's see what the truth is.

The beauty of scientific studies is, they are not done once. Once a study is done, many potential scientists (and kids looking for PHD's and Masters) repeat the studies to see if they get the same results. Even if the study is biased, the scientific community will sort it out eventually.

I honestly would rather have some actual studies done, as opposed to the government just telling me it's bad for me with no proof.

I liken this to the next logical step for the video game industry. Remember, when the ratings were initially introduced, there was some screaming in the letters section of the magazines (the only way to get a feeling for how people felt, since this was before the internet exploded), where people were against ratings. What the ratings allowed was that games didn't need to be made for everyone, it allowed games like Grand Theft Auto (and other mature games) to be made.
 
They did studies.

People use GTA like a crotch.

We are users and sellers of games so we know best already.

This isn't going to raise any test scores in Amerika.

We have lots of real problems already.

Parents who fear problems with Videogames or dislike them should get there kids into something else.

If they wanted a Rating system just use the same tasteful rating system the porn industry use.
 
[quote name='lordxixor101']Maybe I'm the only one here, but I actually welcome a study. We say here that the effects of video games are minor on children, many in the government say otherwise. Instead of arguing, let's see what the truth is.

The beauty of scientific studies is, they are not done once. Once a study is done, many potential scientists (and kids looking for PHD's and Masters) repeat the studies to see if they get the same results. Even if the study is biased, the scientific community will sort it out eventually.[/QUOTE]

Bingo bebe. If things go well in November (prelims), then I'll start work on a dissertation after that. I'd love to do some work on games (since the literature is so nonexistent), but to get funding at the same time? Oh yeah. Oh fuck yeah.
 
[quote name='RegalSin2020']
People use GTA like a crotch.
[/QUOTE]

My dreams have come true.

I always wanted to quote something like this.
 
[quote name='whoknows']Oh thank God. Now we can get down to how those damn video games are hurting the children.[/QUOTE]

Well, I know you're a damned idiot most of the time, and this is probably an accident, but you do have a point.

Studies can show any number of things, but (regretfully) only have a policy impact when they jibe with what politicians want to see. If they don't fit with Joe Liberman's vision of the new world order of video games, I don't imagine he'll champion their cause once research starts to look conclusive. Then again, I hope he gets voted out of office this fall and doesn't get the chance to (but that's neither here nor there).

There are just some things that are political suicide to say, and "you all are the worst fucking parents I have ever seen in my goddamned LIFE" isn't going to get you votes. OTOH, "your kids are all screwy from comic books, video games, that rap music, and sodie pop" will get you a lot farther, even if there is ample evidence that parents suck, and little evidence that sodie pop makes you a shitty kid.

Thirty years ago (I'll try to keep it short), our prison system went from shorter sentences and undercrowded prisons to today, a 700% increase in the population of prisons from the early 70's. The main catalyst was a single, solitary study by a guy named Robert Martinson: his research concluded that no rehabilitation programs do anything to change the reoffense rate of recently-released prisoners; people who had done rehab were just as likely to face rearrest/reincarceration as people who never did it at all.

One study. Of hundreds, if not thousands; politicians JUMPED on it like you would expect them to. Why? For starters, it helped demonize criminals, who aren't near the top of society's popularity charts. It also helped promote "fiscal responsibility" in the form of massive budget cuts for prisons. Why spend money on rehab when it doesn't work?

Of course, prison privatization and a 7-fold increase in the incarcerated population quickly did away with the cost benefits of eliminating rehabilitation programs. Martinson himself was working on a followup study because of serious, serious methodological flaws in his influential paper. Sadly, he threw himself off a building before he ever finished his followup research.

Short story long, the politicians had ignored and ignored and ignored and ignored the vast literature on rehab, and prisoner reentry (with far and few exceptions on the policy side...but I digress). As soon as a single paper came out disconfirming everything else and sitting pretty with their ideologies, it became massively influential in Washington.

In sum, I can do any research I want, and any findings short of "GTA makes your child a godless communist homosexual" will fall into the morass of academic research, sitting on the shelf of libraries everywhere, unread and unloved. Oh well, all I can do is do the work, and hope that some asshole politician would find it useful.

I do have to admit that I'd love to see how gamers would react if it is shown that games have a negative impact. That would be a real treat.
 
Mykevermin,

It's posts like the one above that make you one of my favorite people to reply to on this board.

I'm going to openly admit that I'm just assuming that the story above is true about prison rehad and longer sentences. I've never heard it before now. That being said, if it is true, I know that most studies are repeated, I refuse to believe that no one did a study to test it. If so, did they find similar findings?

Also, from only viewing the world and reading the newspapers, it seems like too many criminals get second chances and repeat their crimes. Can some be rehabbed, sure.

But, is prison ONLY for protection of society, or is it also punishment? Say I killed 10 people in cold blood, but it is somehow 100% proven that I'll never do it again (just assume for this argument). Should I not be in prison? I think that I should be locked up for life here. Even if I'm not doing it anymore, killing 10 people is enough to be locked up for life, irregardless if I'll ever do it again.
 
[quote name='lordxixor101']Mykevermin,

It's posts like the one above that make you one of my favorite people to reply to on this board.

I'm going to openly admit that I'm just assuming that the story above is true about prison rehad and longer sentences. I've never heard it before now. That being said, if it is true, I know that most studies are repeated, I refuse to believe that no one did a study to test it. If so, did they find similar findings?[/quote]

Studies since then have ranged from weak effects of rehab to "decent" (obviously not strong, since prison return rates are anywhere from 40-60% of all released inmates). I'll spare you the bibliography, but rehab has been coming back into the fold since the late 1980's - despite locking up more and more people from the mid-70's to mid-80's, crime was staying the same, or increasing. (If you consider the drug market like an economy, it makes sense: you lock up one person, and another *ahem* "business" shows up to take his place, since there are customers to be served, and profit to be made).

Rehab is still not mandatory for a large number of people, and few participate in it. There's a severe lack of consistency from one prison to the next in what is offered, and prisoners are often sent from one prison to another (it helps prevent alliances amongst inmates, and that's a helpful control mechanism), so some might not have an opportunity to complete a program.

Worst of all, prison is the easiest place on earth to get drugs and other illicit substances (think paying a guard $7-10/hour is going to be all of his income? Think again!), so it's actually quite hard to stay clean while incarcerated.

Also, from only viewing the world and reading the newspapers, it seems like too many criminals get second chances and repeat their crimes. Can some be rehabbed, sure.

But, is prison ONLY for protection of society, or is it also punishment? Say I killed 10 people in cold blood, but it is somehow 100% proven that I'll never do it again (just assume for this argument). Should I not be in prison? I think that I should be locked up for life here. Even if I'm not doing it anymore, killing 10 people is enough to be locked up for life, irregardless if I'll ever do it again.
Click to expand...

Yes. It's both. If you google the name "Marcus Fiesel" (or Feisel?), you'll get a recent account of a situation in Cincinnati, where a foster family bound their autistic child up and put him in a closet for 2 days while they went out of town. They then burned the body to hide evidence, and made a public plea that they couldn't find their child, and urged the city and community to help find him (he ran away from the park, in their story).

So, you have (1) a child with a (2) mental handicap that they (3) bound and kept in a closet for 2 days. The also (4) pled their case to the community, seeking support, sympathy, and help, and it turns out they (5) burned the body to hide evidence. In this case, like you say, there is a next-to-zero chance they would have an opporunity to do this again. Surely no child services agency would give them the time of day, so there's no "crime savings" to be had by incarcerating them (like there would be with a drug dealer). In this case, you can find numerous calls for their fucking heads on a platter from the community. I think, because of the 5 factors I mentioned, you have people who are appalled and feel betrayed at what happened, and demand "justice" in the form of "just desserts" (the criminals "get what's coming to them.")

I recommend Michel Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" for entree into the functions of public punishment and incarceration. The first chapter or so, on public beheadings and other public displays of incarceration (from centuries ago, of course) served the purpose of creating what's called "general deterrence." I'll stop here, as I'm just blathering now. If you're interested, it's a great book, but Foucault is a pain in my fucking ass to read.
 
I say video games do effect childern but that's only because idiot parents let their 5 year old play Grand Theft Auto. What they need to do is punish parents for giving kids overrated games that are not ment for them. Then again, I wouldn't really care what my kid watched.. lol! So yea, I would most likely be one of those idiot parents.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
bread's done
Back
Top