By Jamaal Ryan
Last week, I drew attention to Glenn Beck’s rant on video
games and his ludicrously inconclusive claims about Call of Duty and
suicidality along with the comical assumption that the pipe games, button
prompts, and overall premise of Watch Dogs teaches children how to hack docked
iPads. It was a mind numbing rant to say the least, however I couldn’t help but
be troubled by his readings of coroner John Pollard’s determination (based on “not enough evidence” mind you) of Call
of Duty’s influence on investigated teenage suicides.
Suicidality can be caused by many things. A diagnosis of
major depressive, and various instances of other types of depression, often stymie’s
one’s ability to cope in even the most moderately stressful situations. It can
also increase isolation and pessimistic outlook, and sometimes cripple
rationale to the point that in the event of a serious confrontation or a series
of accumulated small ones: whether that may be a death, loss of employment,
discovered illness, or anything that challenges their sense of control, that they may not see any other way to solve
their problem other than ending their life. Not all suicides have been
clinically labeled as a result of some form of depression, however often there
are environmental, trauma based, and behavioral clues that would lead up to
such an event.
Mark Griffiths, Director of the International
Gaming Research Unit and Professor of Gambling Studies at Nottingham Trent
University, wrote a piece on The
Conversation – which was then reposted on Gamasutra – in response to the coroner’s claims of Call of Duty’s
involvement. He begins:
“Teenage suicide is a tragedy for any family and
those affected will naturally want reasons why their loved ones have taken
their own lives. There are hundreds of scientific studies on suicide and many
risk factors have been identified, including psychological, environmental and
genetic or biological factors. Conditions such as mental illness and substance
abuse can also heighten the risk.”
He then looks to studies that have claimed to have found a
link between video games and suicidality:
“A 2011 US study of
30,000 teenagers reported that those who spent more than five or more hours a
day playing video games were slightly more likely to have thought about
suicide. A similar finding was also reported in a large national German study
of more than 15,000 teenagers in 2010.”
Griffiths continues in pointing out that such findings were
mere links, and reiterating that famous statement those of us who have taken
statistics in school have heard, “Correlation does not mean causation.”
So what could have happened to these poor boys? We are all
more than well aware of the hostile environments such as Xbox Live, communities fraught
with racism, sexism, homophobia, and any other form of hate speech. Such environments
can be demoralizing to one with low self-esteem, especially for those who may have
even given suicide some serious thought. However if that may be the case, then
that is an internet problem, not a video game one. Many of the claims of video
game’s influence on young minds aren’t exclusive to video games and video games
alone; sports and any other platform of skill based activity fosters issues
with self-esteem and aggression as well. In fact, the University of Oxford in
the UK’s study on video game’s
influence on aggression highlights with perfectly.
Griffiths calls these research and reportings as mere
attempts of “scapegoating”. But while agenda driven logic may be able to
fabricate a plausible narrative as to how video games causes violent behavior,
its influences on suicide and educating hacking is just about the dumbest fucking
thing I’ve ever heard.
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