Good riddance to more bad laws...with loving thoughts of the PTC

Well, a federal appeals court has just declared that a California law that tried to limit the sale of violent video games to minors is unconstitutional, violating the First Amendment and the 14th Amendment. Check out the story right here. And my reaction to this is...YESSSSS!!!

Good riddance to yet another bad law based on nonexistent evidence to prove any sort of a causal relationship between media content and behavior.

And yes, in case my big fans in the Parents Television Council are reading this blog, I am indeed grinning very broadly right now, barely able to resist jumping up and down for joy.

Rulings like this are victories for common sense and reason. These are things severely lacking today. You see, we seem to be living in a world where such things as evidence and proof are no longer requirements for many people to make up their minds about issues. A couple of weeks ago, my radio show, WSPC Culture Wars, aired a debate with the head of the New Jersey chapter of the PTC, where that organization's policies on rational, scientific proof were very clearly demonstrated. Not only does the PTC not really care about whether or not their ridiculous assertions about media violence can be scientifically proven, but they wouldn't be able to recognize scientific data if it very aggressively hit them over the head.

A couple of examples: Their web page is filled with "studies" on the amount of violent and offensive behavior in the broadcast media. These are, technically, content analyses, or literally the count of exactly how many times punches are thrown or shots fired or curse words uttered in any given episode of a TV show. That's all nice and good, except that such a study does not prove a causal link. If you're ever taking a statistics or research methods class and you feel like getting and "F" just to make life more exciting, tell your teacher that a content analysis study is a proof of causality. Your "F" will be assured. Maybe the teacher might even mumble something like "moron" or "idiot" under his breath.

Or go to the PTC's link of "Education" and then the link to "outside studies." Here you will find a lot more content analysis studies, as well as a massive pile of correlational studies (and look up this blog's January post about correlations and the explanation for why saying that a correlation proves causality will also earn you an "F" in a stats class). The best part of the PTC's list of outside studies, however, is the fact that they actually list some studies that completely disprove their position about media effects!!!!!!! The conclusion here is obvious:

THESE PEOPLE DON'T READ ANY MORE THAN THE TITLES OF RESEARCH ARTICLES BEFORE THEY POST THEM ON THEIR WEB PAGE! Or, for that matter, before they try to lobby and pressure lawmakers to enact unconstitutional, un-American, McCarthyesque censorship laws.

So yes, while the good folks like the PTC, their blowhard leader, Brent Bozell, and all the "concerned" activists in their local chapters are upset over the California decision today, I am having a really, really good laugh at their expense.

The posts are back! I promise!!

...with more apologies to the readers! From now on anyone can fantasize about violent retribution if they need to go an entire week without an update on this page.

I must confess that during the fun and excitement of a long holiday weekend, there was too much I let get in the way of updating the blog. To confirm the suspicions of some of the people who've written the Culture Wars e-mail account (wspcradio@gmail.com), I might even have been up to some no good. Some of the show's PTC listeners have accused me in the past of being in favor of everything immoral, so at least now I need to be honest. I did rip the wings off of a few flies the last couple of days and tripped an old lady.

But at least the past week has provided some really interesting - and exciting - research to mull over. Check out this article about a study from Europe showing that playing video games is actually good for kids! And I endorse the study because it actually takes the social research approach to its data gathering, talking to video-game-users about the meaning of the video games in their lives. So they eschew the correlational and content analytical nonsense. Good for them!!

A Dangerous Media Effect

Since I was just arguing media effects with the head of the New Jersey chapter of the Parents Television Council on Culture Wars, I can’t help but comment on what may be a truly dangerous media effect I just ran across. And no, it’s not people becoming more violent, or wanting more sex, or trying to bully each other, starving themselves after reading fashion magazines, or watching anything on TV. It’s the possible effect of atrocious journalism.

The FOX news web page has a link to an AP story about a study on video game use by college students, with the headline reading “STUDY: VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES BAD FOR MENTAL HEALTH.” Check it out here.

The article describes a study published in The Journal of Youth and Adolescence. It looked at the sort of people who play a great deal of video games. The researchers report that students who play a great deal of video games are also the ones who may have alcohol problems, use drugs, and have bad personal relationships. The gamers who enjoy the violent games are also the ones to have a lot of sex partners and bad personal relationships. We are told that there is a “clear correlation” between the video gaming habits of these students and the sorry state of their lives.

So this study is proof that video games really cause you to become and alcoholic, a junkie, perhaps a sex addict, and someone who can’t have a healthy relationship, right?

Wrong!

But, of course, going by the AP story, you might conclude exactly that. The way the story is written – and most people are going to get the majority of their science news from the mainstream media rather than reading a dense, jargon-laden academic journal – the average person might conclude that here is a study establishing a clear causality between video game use and behavior.

Except that the study does nothing of the sort. The study finds a correlation, which is NOT the same as causality. A correlation is merely the observation of changes between two variables. From a study like this, we can’t tell if playing video games turned these students into sex-crazed, alcoholic drug users, or if people who like their cheap frat house beer, smoke too much reefer, have sex a lot with different women (most of the problem gamers appear to be men) because they’re loose and licentious (or perhaps they’re just lousy in bed and get dumped after the first roll in the hay) will also play a lot of video games. Maybe if you’re a drunken screw-up to begin with, you might be a high-using videogamer as well.

Again, maybe these people were screw-ups to start with and they turned to video games in their screwed up state.

Of course the problem with this is that media-phobic control freaks like to jump on these stories and get all “active” and “concerned.” For example, we might have a lot of folks at the PTC with a great, big silly grin all over their face right now, writing an Op-ed about the “scientifically proven” danger of video games. Then they’ll be starting campaigns to pass new laws to control video game sales because “the research proves the dangers.” These are the people who are incapable of understanding the nature of correlations in statistics and incapable of grasping why a count of the number of punches thrown in your average Rocky movie is not a proof that Rocky movies cause people to get into fights.

But, nevertheless, these very concerned activists like to get active and pass new laws to control your life and behavior.

And the real culprit in all this is a sloppy reporter!