Datman2020What is something that people think is dangerous but in reality is completely harmless?
Video games. There’s absolutely no evidence that they make people more violent.
Nah man, my friend plays GTA and the next morning he got hit by a bicycle, that’s very dangerous
Friend of a friend sued an antibiotic manufacturer. I think it was Cipro? He started a course for something then a few days in snapped and stabbed someone several times. His claim was that the Cipro caused him to become violent. I don’t think my friend is friends with them anymore.
Gacha games and addiction though.
It’s not quite NO evidence. I would say that it’s very weak evidence of a minor effect. For example: www.apa.org/news/press/releases/…/video-games
It’s a nuanced point where the people who complain that video games are ruining society should be completely ignored, but things like age ratings on games are probably a good idea.
Except age rating is a joke - especially 18+. I get that many games are violent, contain sex scenes, drugs etc., but in my eyes 18 is a barrier when you become responsible for your actions, which would imply playing 18+ games is dangerous like alcohol and cigarettes, while it’s just a PEGI’s way of saying “Somebody said fuck several times”.
Like Witcher 3 obviously fits into 18+, but not because it’s should be 18+, but we got used to these games being 18+. At the age of 14 in school I was required to read Sapkowski’s novels, but god forbid you play Witcher 3.
I think part of the nuance may be that people who already have violent tendencies might gravitate towards more violent video games. In that regard it may be an indicator of existing violent urges but the game being the cause of violent behavior in otherwise non-violent tending people seems not to have any hard evidence.
lasagnaIt’s very easy to correlate a lot of things. Particularly if weak correlation is sufficient. For example, what do you think we’d get if we tried to correlate murderers with cheese consumption?
More violent? No. But there are mountains of evidence that video game addiction is detrimental to people’s mental and physical health.
Nothing wrong with spending some spare time gaming, but when it becomes something you arrange your life around it’s not healthy.
Would you still consider “arranging your life around” a problem if it were a different hobby?
So like… not even like biking, gymnastics, programming, woodworking? Like all those in-depth hobbies are just like… off limits because they’re resource intensive?