Hypocracy in this months NewEra youth LDS rag

[_Polygamy Porter]

An article in the youth LDS rag NewEra, an article, basically tells the youth that media with violence is bad. Just a Little Violence?

I guess the youth should stick to the many stories in the Book of Mormon and Old Testament for violence. If it is commanded by god is it violence?

[_Ray A]

Just a Little Violence?

Watching violent movies and television shows can affect you no matter what they’re rated. For more than 30 years, Church leaders have been warning against watching violence. In 2000, leaders in the United States’ medical community also spoke up with the following statement:

“Well over 1,000 studies … point overwhelmingly to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children. The conclusion of the public health community, based on over 30 years of research, is that viewing entertainment violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values and behavior” (“Joint Statement on the Impact of Entertainment Violence on Children” [July 26, 2000], http://www.aap.org/advocacy/releases/jstmtevc.htm).

Man, combine that with a bottle of bourbon.

[_Mephitus]

I spoke to one psychologist who studies this exact thing. And he said that the media blows things out of proportion. While violent media of any kind can and generally does increase aggressive behavior, the issue is, its such a small measure as to be pointless for any significant weight in a persons life overall. Issues like general personality and stress triggers are much better determinations of reactions than that of entertainment. Many times they even CURB violent behavior due to it being an emotional "out".

Theres even one study going on to determine if the boys of the columbine massacre became violent due to being grounded from violent video-games. The main psychologist of the study cites many times of excessive violent and aggressive markers EVERY TIME they boys where NOT ALLOWED their "emotional out" for any significant length of time (generally 1 week or more).

Quick quote from the article

A new research published in American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry proposed that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a killing rage at Columbine High School in 1999 because they were abruptly denied access to their M-rated games.

According to the study written by Jerald Block, a researcher and psychiatrist in Portland, the two young men relied on the virtual world of computer games to express their rage and to spend time, and cutting them off in 1998 sent them into crisis. "Very soon thereafter - a couple of days - they started to plan the actual attack".

Block sifted through thousands of pages of documents released by Columbine investigators and found that Harris and Klebold had each been temporarily kept off computers at school or at home several times, and after each incident, according to Block, the boys' writings or behavior became more violent.

After the Colorado rampage, the Secret Service searched for common threads in more than three dozen school shootings, said Cheryl Olson, co-director of the Center for Mental Health and Media at the Massachusetts General Hospital. "The commonalities they found were male gender and either being treated for depression or showing signs of depression". Some of the shooters were good students, some bad; some were bullies, some were bullied; and some played video games, but most did not, she added.

"Two-thirds of middle- school boys play M-rated games regularly", said Cheryl Olson. "They're not turning kids into killing machines. The evidence just isn't there".

[_Ray A]

I spoke to one psychologist who studies this exact thing. And he said that the media blows things out of proportion. While violent media of any kind can and generally does increase aggressive behavior, the issue is, its such a small measure as to be pointless for any significant weight in a persons life overall. Issues like general personality and stress triggers are much better determinations of reactions than that of entertainment. Many times they even CURB violent behavior due to it being an emotional "out".

Not according to the APA, nor Prof. Craig Anderson:

Myths and Facts
Myth 1. Violent video game research has yielded very mixed results.
Facts: Some studies have yielded nonsignificant video game effects, just as some smoking studies failed to find a significant link to lung cancer. But when one combines all relevant empirical studies using meta-analytic techniques, five separate effects emerge with considerable consistency. Violent video games are significantly associated with: increased aggressive behavior, thoughts, and affect; increased physiological arousal; and decreased prosocial (helping) behavior. Average effect sizes for experimental studies (which help establish causality) and correlational studies (which allow examination of serious violent behavior) appear comparable (Anderson & Bushman, 2001).

Myth 2. The studies that find significant effects are the weakest methodologically.
Facts: Methodologically stronger studies have yielded the largest effects (Anderson, in press). Thus, earlier effect size estimates —based on all video game studies— probably underestimate the actual effect sizes.

Myth 3. Laboratory experiments are irrelevant (trivial measures, demand characteristics, lack external validity).
Facts: Arguments against laboratory experiments in behavioral sciences have been successfully debunked many times by numerous researchers over the years. Specific examinations of such issues in the aggression domain have consistently found evidence of high external validity. For example, variables known to influence real world aggression and violence have the same effects on laboratory measures of aggression (Anderson & Bushman, 1997).

Myth 4. Field experiments are irrelevant (aggression measures based either on direct imitation of video game behaviors (e.g., karate kicks) or are normal play behaviors.
Facts: Some field experiments have used behaviors such as biting, pinching, hitting, pushing, and pulling hair, behaviors that were not modeled in the game. The fact that these aggressive behaviors occur in natural environments does not make them "normal" play behavior, but it does increase the face validity (and some would argue the external validity) of the measures.

Myth 5. Correlational studies are irrelevant.
Facts: The overly simplistic mantra, "Correlation is not causation," is useful when teaching introductory students the risks in too-readily drawing causal conclusions from a simple empirical correlation between two measured variables. However, correlational studies are routinely used in modern science to test theories that are inherently causal. Whole scientific fields are based on correlational data (e.g., astronomy). Well conducted correlational studies provide opportunities for theory falsification. They allow examination of serious acts of aggression that would be unethical to study in experimental contexts. They allow for statistical controls of plausible alternative explanations.

Myth 6. There are no studies linking violent video game play to serious aggression.
Facts: High levels of violent video game exposure have been linked to delinquency, fighting at school and during free play periods, and violent criminal behavior (e.g., self-reported assault, robbery).

Myth 7. Violent video games affect only a small fraction of players.
Facts: Though there are good theoretical reasons to expect some populations to be more susceptible to violent video game effects than others, the research literature has not yet substantiated this. That is, there is not consistent evidence for the claim that younger children are more negatively affected than adolescents or young adults or that males are more affected than females. There is some evidence that highly aggressive individuals are more affected than nonaggressive individuals, but this finding does not consistently occur. Even nonaggressive individuals are consistently affected by brief exposures. Further research will likely find some significant moderators of violent video game effects, because the much larger research literature on television violence has found such effects and the underlying processes are the same. However, even that larger literature has not identified a sizeable population that is totally immune to negative effects of media violence.

Myth 8. Unrealistic video game violence is completely safe for adolescents and older youths.
Facts: Cartoonish and fantasy violence is often perceived (incorrectly) by parents and public policy makers as safe even for children. However, experimental studies with college students have consistently found increased aggression after exposure to clearly unrealistic and fantasy violent video games. Indeed, at least one recent study found significant increases in aggression by college students after playing E-rated (suitable for everyone) violent video games.

Myth 9. The effects of violent video games are trivially small.
Facts: Meta-analyses reveal that violent video game effect sizes are larger than the effect of second hand tobacco smoke on lung cancer, the effect of lead exposure to I.Q. scores in children, and calcium intake on bone mass. Furthermore, the fact that so many youths are exposed to such high levels of video game violence further increases the societal costs of this risk factor (Rosenthal, 1986).

Myth 10. Arousal, not violent content, accounts for video game induced increases in aggression.
Facts: Arousal cannot explain the results of most correlational studies because the measured aggression did not occur immediately after the violent video games were played. Furthermore, several experimental studies have controlled potential arousal effects, and still yielded more aggression by those who played the violent game.

Myth 11. If violent video games cause increases in aggression, violent crime rates in the U.S. would be increasing instead of decreasing.
Facts: Three assumptions must all be true for this myth to be valid: (a) exposure to violent media (including video games) is increasing; (b) youth violent crime rates are decreasing; (c) video game violence is the only (or the primary) factor contributing to societal violence. The first assumption is probably true. The second is not true, as reported by the 2001 Report of the Surgeon General on Youth Violence (Figure 2-7, p. 25). The third is clearly untrue. Media violence is only one of many factors that contribute to societal violence and is certainly not the most important one. Media violence researchers have repeatedly noted this.

http://www.apa.org/science/psa/sb-anderson.html

[_Mercury]

New Era writing Formula:

step 1.

-The sin is the antagonist
-Always have the transgression take place somewhere Mormons never go, like a raging Kegger.
-Talk about the personal pain and bulls*** humility asked of the fictional teenager
-Always have a faithful loving parental figure you can go to, unless they are giving the usual "sally was from a part member family" shtick.
-Have it state that the sin was forgiven but the memory lives forever. Mwahahaha!!!!!!!

Step 2.

???????

Step 3.

PROFIT!