Study: Violent games lead to drug, alcohol abuse

Via Gamespot

Anti-game activists got another bit of ammunition today, courtesy of a study published in The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. The study, which was jointly conducted by San Francisco- and Pittsburgh-based researchers, came to the conclusion that playing violent video games leads to "permissive attitudes toward violence, alcohol use, marijuana use, and sexual activity without condom use."

The study, titled "Effects of Media Violence on Health-Related Outcomes Among Young Men," was based on a sampling of 100 male undergraduate students aged 18 to 21 years. It randomly assigned the subjects to play one of two video games--VU Games' The Simpsons: Hit & Run and Grand Theft Auto III. Subjects were selected so that the test group would have "differing amounts of lifetime home and community violence."

The study's conclusions? "Men randomly assigned to play Grand Theft Auto III exhibited greater increases in diastolic blood pressure from a baseline rest period to game play, greater negative affect, more permissive attitudes toward using alcohol and marijuana, and more uncooperative behavior in comparison with men randomly assigned to play The Simpsons," read the report.

It stated that specifically "only among participants with greater exposure to home and community violence, play of Grand Theft Auto III led to elevated systolic blood pressure in comparison with play of The Simpsons." The report continuted, "Although youth growing up in violent homes and communities may become more physiologically aroused by media violence exposure, all youth appear to be at risk for potentially negative outcomes."

The report ran in the same issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine as an article that assesed the rating scheme of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB). Titled "Content and Ratings of Mature-Rated Video Games," the study gave a mixed report card to the ESRB.

"Although the Entertainment Software Rating Board content descriptors for violence and blood provide a good indication of such content in the game, we identified 45 observations of content that could warrant a content descriptor in 29 games (81 percent) that lacked these content descriptors," read the report.

The title reads..."Study: Violent games lead to drug, alcohol abuse"

..forgot to squeeze in "Good for nothing, Irresponsible Parents who don't see a T or M rating on the box" up there next to Violent games.

Seriously...I somewhat have to agree with the article, but a simple game will not influence you to kill, rape, do drugs or committ other crimes if you are in the ages of 16 and up....There's something deeper at work inside an individual during this age and it's called free will. Now...this free will is mostly encouraged by the individual's surroundings such as family & friends and possibly very little by media. Why? Because everybody knows what's wrong or right since the ages of four to ten , and if they don't...then the parents are to blame. Besides, media always blames itself...A product comes out, (example*some bloody game) the kid buys it (through a bad parenting decision, or vise versa) the kid plays it, & a couple of days later sticks a pencil in the neck of a classmate. I'm sorry but it wasn't the kids fault, but the parent's, who failed to see their actions between the lines. This kid was probably never taught right from wrong (parent's fault twice) and was probably raised inside a conflictive, hateful environment (parent's fault a third time...third strike, you're out!) Then later come the news....the complaining anti-game people...more stupid parents buying the media for their un-raised kids....Put in washer and spin, recycle, make the headlines(MEDIA) and eventually blame the game.

People don't realize it, but....this is why the Internet, News, Magazines, etc...MEDIA exist. TO HELP YOU PICK RIGHT FROM WRONG WHAT MEDIA YOU WISH TO BUY,SEE,EAT,SH*T,ETC....

But, being such comsumers that we are, we go and grab it of the shelves on the first day without having heared a written or voiced opinion on the media itself. Then if it's bad....watch out! Here comes the complaining again!

A game can't make an action by itself. Don't blame the game when it's the players influence that make the actions...

Society is also to blame...Just my two cents.

About eight years ago I woke up in a graveyard, I was stoned, there was empty bottles of booze scattered everywhere, there were two strange ladies still asleep on each of my arms...

I don't remember what the hell happened but the previous day I'd been playing Resident Evil, do you think I should take out a lawsuit against Capcom?.

To hell with that!, I think I'll send them a thankyou letter!.

i really dont care about this stuff anymore, no matter how much you defend somthing, someone somewhere will always complain. Though im against one game, WOW lost too many friends to it, now if that where on psp it would allow them to be moblie and prolly not gain weight, and enable them to attend class their paying for, YOU PEOPLE KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!!

yeah well i dont understand what all these dumb-ass tests or studies do... if anything the people in the studies should be the focus point. becouse they should find out what makes someone so vulnerable to change the way they are just couse they shot or punched someone in a game. ive been playing violent ass games all my life and i have never done any kind of drugs and i dont drink.and alot of the people i play games with are al sober and clean too. i think theres a room full of lifeless weiners that just sit in a room and come up with ideas that they think will make them sound important and proving that games are the devil will do so.

Violence in video games incourages sex without condoms???

So you log onto your computer, and play Soldier of Fortune too (with all the cheats) and are blowing peoples arms, legs, and heads off... hearing their gargled screams from the stump that was their head.... being exposed to a massive amounts of violence...

you're mate walks in.. all the sudden you grab him or her, throw them on your bed, and say "alright, i just played a violent video game, so without any protection this time"

Boo on these anti video game activists. Blaming video games, is a horrible idea, even if they didn't have the video games they still probably would of done drugs. When I was 5 years old, my brother (15 at the time) bought the genesis version of Mortal Kombat 1 and I often played against him. 11 years lator, I'm 16 and do I go around ripping peoples heads off and removing their hearts, NO. Now I own all most all the MK series, and I am still havent uppercuted some one into a bed of spikes.

Are they still flogging that SAME dead horse?

When it comes to mental illness, the mentally ill tend to focus on violence because to a mentally ill person and really everybody, violence is the dominant force. They would carry with them and make it part of them and if not corrected, act on it later. If someone is going to develop a mental illness, They will carry violent and violent imagery with them also and act on it later. Especially with childrenn who are very impressionable. Grand theft auto III is just an example of a game really can make criminals out of people. :)

ok, I will have to object! When I'm stoned, the last thing I want to play is a violent game, most of them are to complicated to even play when your baked outa your mind.. I prefer Games likw Worms Armageddon, Y's, Final Fantasy 7, 8, or 9.. I dont sit around and toke to play Postal 2....

however I will admit there is a connection between Marijuana and Video Games.. for most people, getting stoned is a way to have fun in their otherwise boring lives, and when you get stoned, you want to do somthing fun.. games and movies are about the only fun things to do that dont require a lot of work-intellegence to watch-play.. the last thing you'll find a stoner playing would be Rainbow Six 3: Lockdown.. that game gets hard when your stoned, because people just run up and start shooting you..

either way, in summation.. I would say that study is totaly false.. its not violent games, its all games.. and I think that these retards that do these studys should get a new job studying how Marijuana realy has no effect on the human brain, and should be legalized.. Thank you!
Jman420

P.S. according to last nights study, I thought that Video games were supposed to improve your chances of getting-getting someone else pregnant.. I can tell you, I wouldnt quite be in the mood if I was drunk and stoned, and playing doom 3...

:mad: Video games don't lead to alcohol and drugs. Alcohol and drugs lead to video games and munchies... ;)

Games are just another thing in a long list that the older generations just don't understand. When they don't understand something they try to reject it by talking shit and doing all these studies. I remember back in the day when they tried to say Power Rangers made all the kids beat each other up at school, yeah right. What ever happend to that. Then they tried to blame Marolyn Manson for all those school killings, and did studies into rock or goth music or whatever caused people to kill.

Don't remeber what happend with that because all these reports started coming out about video games making people kill started coming out. Coincedence, I think not. 2 years from now it will be holographic cell phones that are making people dumb shit. The government just needs something dumb ass to bitch about and waste there time and everyone elses and not do there real job about trying to help the country. F**K the establishment, and start a new trend, games lead to hugs. Peace, love and games.

I would have posted a better reply, but unfortunately, I am typing with my feet after I took acid while drinking, ripped off my arms and had sex with many random objects (without a condom) back in 94 when mortal kombat came out and they claimed these same arguments, I wanted to see if it was true...

Have they ever thought that uber-violent games could have simply created a new audience... I mean I know if I was a drug taking, fornicating, violent ass Alcoholic.. I would rather play a game that was more fitting of my personality then a platformer...

Although the industry is to blame with all this blatant, (I'm 20 and gangster and I'm not yet a movie... but not really a game) shit they keep spewing out, gone is the originality that the genesis and snes era's had... now all that is left is mediocrity and some diamonds in the rough.

I guess in short, as benny said before, drugs and alcohol lead to video games, not the other way around :D

i also think these games are becoming too violent..(i mean trash!!)... old school gaming was better with only fictious theme and fun gameplay only to entertain you...now everything changed.... but for me i have no real prob wit the games as i know these are all virtual and there is no way in the world i wud do what i do in games!!!

and apparently you didnt pick up any proper grammar-spelling from video games :P

It's basically a struggle of bullcrap :o ... You want to blame anything, :mad: blame alcohol. Alcohol related deaths occur more often than anything else. People who end up going to jail saying that they were influenced by a videogame is all an act :cool: . If somebody dies in a drunkdriving incident :( , the family of the deceased can't take the people who made the alcohol to court :confused: ... Video Games are a stoule-pigeon for the bigger corporations who pass the blame off... :mad:

yeah, this is no more then a scapegoat.. back in the 50's (when Marijuana was officialy make ilegal) people used the "Marijuana Insanity Defence" which allowed people to get off the hook just because they were high.. and I promis you, smoking a little puff didnt make them insane and kill people.. however, people are truly using videogames as a scapegoat to get out of trouble for doing things similar to what someone might see on video games..

its nothing more then a buncha crap.. violence in games is somthing that isnt needed. but isnt harmful.. Also, I beleave that games have moved away from violence being somewhat innocent, and all games have moved tward killing humans.. there was once a day when playing Resedent Evil was killing zombies, that were going to kill you first.. but! they realy looked nothing like humanoids.. they were just badly rendered dudes with blue skin.. now! on Resedent Evil 4.. your accualy killing mexicans.. (not ment to be racist) your killing accual humans(or so the game tells you)

its not a problem with me, I had the original Postal game, along as Postal2, and appocalypse weekend.. all of which you ran around killing humans in arizona with shovels. I dont have a problem with violence, but its when other people fuhq it up for me, thats when I have a problem.

people should just mind their own buisness.. I'm mature, I can play whatever I want to...

and yes, I'm not just flaming, I know that this is about drug use and violent games.. but I think its accualy no more then a hoax.. violent games dont accualy lead to drugs.. The Man just wants us to quit playing violent games by using a scare tactic.. much like Hell to christians.. its not true, but it scares them into being good people..

only 1 more thing! Language in video games.. there was once a day when large dung beetles would tell you how they roll shite around all day.. on N64.. now the man has made them take the word shit out of the newer version of the game for XBOX..

@DCDayDreamer
The last time i played super mario i found my self next to stumped turtles. I was on magic mushrooms.The good thing was i repaired all pipelines we have @ home. But the princess was still missing.... Hehehe

@cndnlink
When TV came out all kids who murdered they did because of tv (not realy but they said)
When the first streetfighter came out all kidz who hit each other up did that because they played streetfighter.
When the first mario came out all kidz who had eaten mushrooms they just did because they wanted to become as big as mario is(and perhaps as fat as he is too).
When Rockmusic came out all kidz who had drunken to much did that because they wanted to become a rockstar.

But when the first parents came out the kidz made same mistakes as their parents because they want to become adult!

Damn every thing new is EVIL and has to be destroyed before parents have to watch for they kidz.....stupid poeple. I played resident evil and didnt kill anybody. I listen to rock and dont drink much.(just on birthdays for example)

And before videogames and television the childreen didnt drink/kill/tooked drugs/beaten each other...
That sure was a boring time. And next thing: Each studie in USA which has to do with violance would have other results in europe/canada/or the rest of the world. And the rest surely has drugs/gore in tv/video games.... So they should search for things which are just in the staates to find out why it happens there much more then every where else...

lol, I dont quite understand all of that, but it was funny

Hi, im Hayley, im currently studying media studies in 6th form and am mid way through my critical research study.

I was wondering if anyone could give me their views on tv violence altering children's perception of violence. do you agree / disagree with this? and why?

do you think that certain programming beofre the watershead could be harmful to children, with some of the mild violence it contains, such as eastenders and Tom and Jerry and even the Simpsons?

All views are welcome

Cheers

x

Games is an intresting one. It is to enjoy our life. Dont treat them as a violent. It will also lead to drug, alcohol abuse. It took acid while drinking, ripped off their arms . Thank you.
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quorra
Addiction Recovery California