Junieg-it doesn't look like I will change your mind either. Although, when you say more people are against them, I'm sure you mean on this board, and not in this country generally (assuming you are from the US). That's largely a generational difference, and one in which the critics are often uninformed (for the record, you do know that Child's Play 3 was a movie, not a video game, right?). The same thing happened with comic books in the 1950's. I had kind of hoped to present the other side and allow concerned parents some time to think about the issue before jumping on the "violent video games are evil and kids should never play them" bandwagon.

Stephy-what I was getting at was, Bandura's experiment was very flawed. It was conducted in a very artificial setting that tells us nothing about any real life situation. It tried to link learning of violence to the hitting of a Bobo doll, a toy that is meant to be hit. Hopefully you'll agree that there is a huge difference between hitting a doll and hitting a person. Finally, the kids in that study were invited, and even encouraged, by the researcher, to engage in that activity. That smacks of both researcher bias and demand characteristics-kids will feel like they have to do this activity to please the man in the white coat, not that they will do this in a normal, everyday situation.

My apologies Junie, I seem to have answered for you there. Please add your own comments.

Here in the US, there are often attempts to legislate the sales of violent video games to minors, which violate our First Amendment right to free speech. After a while, it became apparent that the way to counter this was not to combat the legislators, but rather to change popular sentiment about these games so it is no longer an issue among their constitutents. I do understand that most people have thought about the issue. I was just trying to provide more information that they may not have known at the time. People can often be shocked at buzz words like "murder", "blood", etc., without looking further into the context of the game, or basing their decisions on personal prejudice against that content. When balancing the two sides, who did you listen to? If only people from the video game industry voiced support of their products, it leads to the notion of "evil corporation trying to profit off our children", which is easy to dismiss out of hand, vs. independent accounts of how the game was enjoyable and harmless for many people. Did you automatically believe studies like the Bandura experiment and the more recent game studies, or did you take time out to see how they can be flawed? Did you ever consider the positive effects such as those mentioned in the Gerard Jones article I linked to? Had you ever heard that argument before then? You are both well-intentioned, but I want to ensure you have all the facts before forming your opinion. If you had heard these arguments before, or they haven't persuaded you, I am still curious to know why you think I am wrong.

I'll leave you with this little fact: in my country, starting in about 1992, when video games first started becoming increasingly violent, we have seen an almost steady decrease in our crime rate. In fact, our crime rate is currently at a 30-year low.

I will say that video games can impact some kids who are already mentally disturbed. However, there are also some kids who, if given a pair of scissors, would gouge someone's eyes out. Would you then say that it is best to ban kids from using scissors? Unfortunately, some kids will fall through the cracks, and the best defense is constant vigilance for signs of danger.

As for the kids in the Centre engaged in pretend killing, I wouldn't worry about that being developmentally harmful. It is done in their own fantasy world, and while adults may be horrified at the literal meaning, for kids it has important symbolic meaning. Here's Gerard Jones again to tell us more:

We don’t help children learn the difference between fantasy and reality when we allow their fantasies to provoke reactions from us that are more appropriate to reality. When a child is joyfully killing a friend who loves being killed, we don’t make things clearer for them by responding with an anxious, ‘You shouldn’t shoot people!’ Instead we blur the very boundaries that they’re trying to establish. We teach them that pretend shooting makes adults feel threatened in reality, and therefore their own fantasies must be more powerful and more dangerous than they thought. The result for the child is more anxiety and self-doubt, more concern over the power of violent thoughts, less sense of power over their own feelings, and less practice expressing their fantasies.

Also, Henry Jenkins, a professor of media studies at MIT, explains that violence in play takes on an entirely different context than in reality. He is speaking about video games specifically here, but it can be generalized to the sort of play these kids are engaging in. These kids can still learn empathy and gentleness while allowing their fantasies to take on a different tone.

Classic studies of play behavior among primates suggest that apes make basic distinctions between play fighting and actual combat. In some circumstances, they seem to take pleasure wrestling and tousling with each other. In others, they might rip each other apart in mortal combat. Game designer and play theorist Eric Zimmerman describes the ways we understand play as distinctive from reality as entering the "magic circle." The same action — say, sweeping a floor — may take on different meanings in play (as in playing house) than in reality (housework). Play allows kids to express feelings and impulses that have to be carefully held in check in their real-world interactions. Media reformers argue that playing violent video games can cause a lack of empathy for real-world victims. Yet, a child who responds to a video game the same way he or she responds to a real-world tragedy could be showing symptoms of being severely emotionally disturbed. Here's where the media effects research, which often uses punching rubber dolls as a marker of real-world aggression, becomes problematic. The kid who is punching a toy designed for this purpose is still within the "magic circle" of play and understands her actions on those terms. Such research shows us only that violent play leads to more violent play.

As Freud once said, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." Don't read too much into it.

I think if video games really had an effect on us everyone from my generation would either be locked in a white room trying to eat pellets and run from ghosts or have trouble crossing the street one pixel at a time.

Our culture is more violent now probably because firearms are more readily available and children recieve less personal attetntion from parents, teachers and the community at large.