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Study: violent video games do not cause players to become more violent

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Boys and girls playing Pandemic board game
Boys and girls playing Pandemic board game

Brad Wilcox re-tweeted a tweet that mentioned this study which I think is interesting. It’s important to me that Christians not get sucked into every fad crisis.

Story from U.S. News and World Report: (links removed)

In truth, there’s no evidence to connect violent video games to violence in society. Several studies, such as by psychologist Patrick Markey and economist Scott Cunningham, have linked the release of popular violent video games with immediate declines in societal violence. Correlation between the consumption of these games and societal reductions in youth violence were well established, but these newer studies suggest there may be some causal element to this.

Studies of youth also call into question whether a link between violent video games and aggression exists. In a 2015 meta-analysis of studies examining video game effects on youth, little evidence emerged for causal links between violent video games and behavioral problems in youth. Likewise, studies have not supported that a population of youth exists who are “vulnerable” to game effects. One recent study from the University of Missouri found that neither young adults diagnosed on the autism spectrum nor neurotypical young adults became more aggressive when exposed to violent video games. Nor, in a study I conducted with Cheryl Olson, were these games associated with bullying or delinquency among youth with pre-existing mental health symptoms. This is not to say that all studies agree: Over the years, some have found evidence for some kinds of effects (usually on minor aggressive acts, like filling in the missing letters of ki__ as “kill” rather than “kiss”); others have not. But gradually, the evidence has weakened, and it has become clear that media effects research has become part of psychological science’s larger replication crisis, where many effects once thought true are now proving difficult to replicate with better, preregistered studies.

This is also reflected in the scientific community where surveys of scholars and cliniciansfind little evidence for a consensus that effects exist. Indeed only a minority of scholars and clinicians agree that violent video games cause aggression or violence in society. And as is common for generational disagreements over new media, the split even among experts finds older experts more inclined to view video games in a negative light.

Because of all of this, some criminologists have taken to referring to links between violent video games and mass shootings specifically as a “myth.”

Although I do believe that violent video games don’t cause people to me more violent, I do think that it increases tolerance for other people committing violence, which is why I don’t play them. I am a gamer, but I never play violent first-person shooters. My favorite games are military simulators like Harpoon and Command, as well as cartoon-y retro dungeon crawlers (Etrian Odyssey series) and cooperative games like Keep Talking and No One Explodes or the board game Pandemic.

I just think that it is important that we not malign boys any more than is accurate for their different male natures. Boys are more aggressive than girls. It’s not a mental disorder, it’s being a boy. If it wasn’t for this aggressive male nature, we would have no soldiers and policemen to fight evil with force.

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Do husbands and wives have specific responsibilities in a marriage?

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Does government provide incentives for people to get married?
Marriage advice from someone who knows

I found another awesome post by Lindsay.

The post starts explaining how a woman supports a man in his role as spiritual leader of the home. I always talk about the responsibilities of a husband/father in the home being protecting, providing and leading on moral and spiritual issues. Most young, unmarried women I know are thoroughly indocrinated in radical feminism, and reject these roles.

Lindsay is fine with men leading in all 3 of those roles, but this is the part of her post that I really liked:

Once children arrive, it becomes pretty much impossible for her to work outside the home and still fulfill her duties at home. The funny thing about children is that they need constant care. One cannot care for children and work outside the home too. The choice once children come along is whether to outsource the care of the children to someone else or to do it yourself. I firmly believe that God entrusts children to a husband and wife because he wants them to be the primary influences in their children’s lives. That doesn’t happen if the children spend a majority of their waking hours in the care of someone else.

Children don’t just need food and shelter provided to them, they need love, teaching, discipline, a sense of security, and examples of how they are to live. All of those things are best done when the child spends time primarily with his or her parents. Daycare workers, school teachers, and even grandparents simply cannot provide them in the same way parents can. No one loves a child like his own parents do. No one has such a vested interest in ensuring that he grows up with the proper spiritual and moral training. Even if others care about the child, the responsibility for the training of a child belongs to his parents. Daycare workers and teachers and grandparents won’t answer to God for the soul of that child. His parents will.

So, given the needs of children, I am convinced that women are called to be with their children, training and caring for them as their primary caregiver. Does that mean a mother can’t have any job outside the home? In theory, no. In practice, yes. A woman’s priority must be her own family. If she can have her children with her or leave them for only a short time each day, she may still be able to provide the necessary training and care they need from their mother and earn some income. But in doing that, she needs to be sure she is not neglecting her husband’s needs either. Theoretically, a woman can have it all – keeping a job and caring for her family too. The problem is that it is a very rare woman who has the energy to keep up with the constant needs of her children for care, training, discipline, and love and those of her husband for companionship, sex, and a partner in life as well as the logistics of running a household and still have something left for even a part-time job.

What usually happens when a woman has an outside job is that her family simply suffers the lack. Either her children spend a lot of time with other caregivers or teachers or her husband does without the companionship and marital intimacy he needs or some of the household chores descend on the husband, taking away some of his time and energy to train his children spiritually and impact the world for Christ. Often it’s a combination of these. A woman simply cannot meet all the needs of her family when she is spread that thin and, as a result, something important gets left undone.

I wish I could find women who had definite ideas about what they wanted to do with their children, but thinking back over previous relationships, what I usually hear is that they want to go on mission trips, do pro-life protests, have careers, etc. No one looks at these little kids with any sort of plan to grow them into anything. I just think it’s depressing that kids are not part of most women’s plans. If there is any plan at all it’s that there should be no plan, and the kids can just do anything they want.

How depressing for the man to think about when he has to pay all the bills to raise kids who are aiming at nothing, and will surely hit it. What kind of man is excited about having children when his wife is not on board with making them into anything special? The worst of all is when the women who are thoroughly indoctrinated in radical feminism actually reject men who are good at the three roles, and make excuses for more “fun” men who are lousy at all three roles! The world is going backwards.

News

Hillary Clinton never completed mandatory information security training

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What difference does national security make?
What difference does national security make?

The Daily Caller explains how Hillary Clinton conducted business as Secretary of State – the top diplomat of the most powerful country in the world.

Excerpt:

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton completed no security briefings or courses on the proper handling of classified materials and how to conduct secure communications while at the Department of State, according to new Obama administration legal filingsbefore the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The surprise admission was released late Friday and could reignite the controversy over Clinton’s “careless” handling of classified materials as asserted by FBI Director James Comey, which has already been a central part of the presidential race.

The revelation also could renew calls for the Department of State to strip her of her security clearance. The co-founder of at least one retired military officers organization has called for a suspension of her clearance.

State Department officials previously reported they could not locate records certifying that Clinton or her top aides took the annually required security courses and briefings.

But on July 29, Obama administration officials went further, saying their failure to locate any documents meant that the “courses were not completed” by the secretary or her aides.

[…]“If the search of these databases did not locate any such training records, then the courses were not completed,” concluded Eric Stein, the co-director of the State Department’s Office of Information Programs and Services in the July 29 filing before U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon.

Specifics about her aides:

State Department records released to TheDCNF show that Cheryl Mills and Jacob Sullivan, two top Clinton aides, took cybersecurity awareness courses once, but not for all four years.

The records show Clinton and aide Huma Abedin never took any cybersecurity awareness training.

Utter contempt for the law, policies, procedures, best practices. Hillary Clinton is above information security and national security.

Have you ever dealt with someone who made decisions based on her emotions? Someone who dismissed all moral rules and objective constraints, believe somehow that these rules were not necessary t succeed? Someone who had utter confidence in her emotions and intuitions such that she dismissed objective constraints? Someone who refused to be held accountable after causing disasters? Someone who attacked others and blamed others instead of taking responsibility? Someone who did dirty, disgusting things in private, thinking that as long as people liked her, then it would be OK? Someone who had no sense of morality, apart from public opinion?

That’s what you are getting in Hillary Clinton. It is everything seen in her past actions. Utter contempt for prescriptive morality. Utter disrespect for the seriousness national security and foreign policy. I think she should stick to yoga routines and Chelsea’s wedding rather than trying to work in areas where she is clearly not qualified to work. The president of the United States is not a job that should be opened to affirmative action candidates whose sole qualifications are gender and marrying someone important. We need someone qualified.