My Hypothesis – Oatmealvibes

Posted on January 23, 2023 by oatmealvibes
  1. Video games and mental health
  2. Violent video games and mental health
  3. The effects violent video games have on young children
  4. Young children become curious about violence in the video games they’re playing and wonder how the violence would play out in real life
  5. Letting young children play more violent video games will cause them to become desensitized to violence
  6. Letting young children play more violent video games will stop them from wanting to commit violence they’ve seen in video games due to desensitization
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2 Responses to My Hypothesis – Oatmealvibes

  1. davidbdale says:
    February 12, 2023 at 2:09 pm

    I’m intrigued by your Hypothesis, Oatmeal. It runs contrary to what most people believe (and what your readers are likely to believe) about the effect of desensitization.

    Common thinking goes something like (in no particular order):
    1. Kids don’t curse if they aren’t exposed to cursing
    2. Kids who hear a lot of cursing at home are likely to curse in public
    3. Kids who hear a lot of cursing in popular culture become “desensitized” to cursing
    4. When desensitized, they aren’t shocked by cursing, don’t think there’s anything wrong with it
    5. Desensitization removes the negative stigma from actions, making them more likely to occur

    Your Hypothesis imagines that something like the opposite of this “common knowledge” pattern will occur.

    And THAT makes it worthwhile studying.

    This source draws the common conclusions:

    I can’t help noticing, though, that it bases its results on ANSWERS TO SURVEYS. It doesn’t track actual violence committed by kids who are exposed to video games (or real-life violence). It asks them questions about how sensitive and helpful (and how callous and aggressive) they are.

    If you can find strong evidence that violent video games IMPROVE behavior, or are NEUTRAL on behavior, that’s great.

    But if you can’t find THAT evidence, you have an alternative. You can DISQUALIFY the studies that pretend to connect violent actions to violent viewing or play.
    1. How kids describe their behavior is INACCURATE or UNPROVEN.
    2. It’s just as likely that violent kids ARE ATTRACTED TO violent games, instead of the other way around.

    Does this help?

    If you like Feedback, be sure to Reply, Oatmeal. If you don’t respond, I stop providing Feedback. Simple contract. 🙂

    Like

    Reply
    • oatmealvibes says:
      February 13, 2023 at 7:18 pm

      I do like the feedback, thank you for giving me some! Your last piece of feedback to me about disqualifying the studies that pretend to connect violent actions to violent viewing or playing was especially helpful and gave me some good ideas. Thank you for your feedback and I’m looking forward to more!

      Like

      Reply

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