After five years, China’s national Care for Girls program has barely nudged the sex imbalance.
Even after five years the numbers haven't really changed. The care for girls program will barely make a mark in China's large population that maybe in a decade or two the number of girls might equal out the number of boys.
The research on this question is mixed. For decades, researchers have conducted studies to find out whether violent video games lead to problems such as aggression, lack of empathy and poor performance in school. Many studies have found that people who play violent video games are more likely to engage in aggressive behavior. In fact, there was enough research leading to this conclusion that the American Psychiatric Association (APA) published a policy statement in 2015 concluding that playing violent video games leads to more aggressive moods and behaviors and detracts from the players’ feeling of empathy and sensitivity to aggression.
I do not disagree with the notion that video games have an effect on people that may negatively impact them, but Its not the only effect. Our environment conditions us to become desensitized to certain behaviors. Younger generations may seem more violent but it may be because of their upbringing.
There is emerging research that finds no link between violent games and negative outcomes, such as reduced empathy, aggression and depression.
Video games are just like any other media. They help us, inform us and tell a lot about ourselves without saying much. The video games that we play speak to other about who we are and what we like. We tend to play games that are fun and enjoyable, which helps us forget the scary world around us.
Another review finds that much of the research on violence and video games is affected by publication bias; essentially, studies that concluded that video games lead to aggression and violence are more likely to be published than studies that find violent video games don’t have an effect on violence. As a result, large reviews of the data conclude violent video games lead to aggression without considering research to the contrary.
Certain publishers want to publish biased articles and ignore that there are always two sides of an argument.
Large analyses of violent crime and video violent game use find no evidence that increased sales of violent video games leads to a spike in violent crimes. Researchers make the case that if violent games directly led to violent behavior, the data would show increases in violent crime on a large-scale as more people played violent games. In fact, there is some evidence that as more youth play video games, rates of youth violence have decreased.
Many people who say that video games cause violence fail to see why that is simply not the case. If video games were directing linked to violence, then the crime rate would rise with the release of new violent games.
While not overly gory, the premise for Fortnite is inherently violent; the primary goal is to kill other players. The popularity of these types of games, and this one in particular, raises clear questions about the effects of violent gaming. Specifically, do violent video games lead to real-life violence?
The premise of the game is to come out on top of the other 99 players. Yes there is killing but that is not why it is popular. It's a free to play game with the graphics of a cartoon. Its meant to attract younger players with the quirky dances and skins, not with the violence.
Others have tried to tease out the aftereffects of playing violent games. In a 2012 study, Andr Melzer of the University of Luxembourg, along with Mario Gollwitzer of Philipps University Marburg in Germany, found that inexperienced players felt a need to “cleanse” themselves after playing a violent video game (the so-called Macbeth effect: “Out, damned spot!”). Researchers asked subjects to play either a driving game or the mayhem-heavy Grand Theft Auto for 15 minutes, then pick gifts from an assortment, half “hygienic” (shower gel, deodorant, toothpaste) and half nonhygienic (gummy bears, Post-it notes, a box of tea). Inexperienced players who played Grand Theft Auto were more likely to pick out hygienic products than were experienced players or inexperienced players who had played the driving game.
Calling Grand Theft Auto a driving game makes it sounds more innocent than it actually is. It's a sandbox game, meaning your player avatar can do whatever you want them to do. This of course, can lead to violence in the game, but that violence in the game does not translate to real world violence. The reward for playing the game does not even add anything to the argument. The gift doesn't really symbolize anything.
The problem is that many of the findings, especially when applied to children's media and play, are misleading at best. Critic Gerard Jones, whose 2003 book Killing Monsters makes a case for giving kids access to “make-believe violence,” writes: “There is no evidence to suggest that punching an inflatable clown has any connection to real-life violence.” In many cases, he and others say, researchers mistake natural competitiveness or the effects of discomfort for aggression or mislabel the subjects' temporary aggression as behavior that holds the potential for violence. In an often quoted 1976 study led by Brian Coates at Washington State University, researchers found that preschoolers who watched the famously mild Mister Rogers' Neighborhood were three times more aggressive afterward. Jones suggests that the experiment itself may have made kids anxious or even angry by compelling them to “sit in a hard plastic chair in a strange room” and watch TV on cue.
This passage is important solely do to the fact that it highlights one of the biggest problems with finding research involving younger kids. Researches force them to sit in an unfamiliar place and is force to watch a TV play. This is enough to spark anxiety in the younger kids, causing them to act out.
Faced with the frustration of having nice new toys suddenly snatched away, the preschoolers who had watched Bobo get mistreated were more likely than the others to take out their aggression on the mini Bobo. Bandura repeated the experiment in 1963, using film and cartoon depictions of Bobo's mistreatment, with similar results. The conclusions seemed clear: watching unchecked aggression in real life, on film or in cartoons makes us more aggressive because it provides us with “social scripts” to guide our behavior. Bandura's conclusions opened a floodgate of “media effects” research that continues today.
These social scripts can be easily turned to help the child into releasing their frustrations in helpful or non-harmful ways. It is true that kids will react the way they do, but it's only because no one has taught them any different.
Yet no one knows how any of these games—Dance Dance Revolution included—might have affected a kid who was clearly struggling. The truth is that decades of research have turned up no reliable causal link between playing violent video games and perpetrating actual violence. This is not to say that games have no effect. They're built to have an effect. It's just not necessarily the one that most people think.
I disagree with the idea that no one knows how any of these games had an effect on a struggling kid. People don't often like to show emotions, since it shows weakness in us. Video games can help us hide these weaknesses and vent them out in helpful and creative ways.
But those weren't the games that possessed Lanza at the movie theater. The title that so consumed the Sandy Hook shooter? Dance Dance Revolution—an arcade staple that has players dance on colored squares to the rhythm of Asian techno-pop. That discovery not only surprised investigators, it also was at odds with overheated speculation in the media and around dinner tables that violent video games had helped turn Lanza into a killer.
This short paragraph shows that Lanza didn't only play violent video games but that he also played a dancing game. Games like these can help relax people and release frustrations.