Battleangel

Reuters / Yahoo: Video Games Make Kids Fat, Violent, Swedish Experts Say

Yeah, thank God for Swedish “experts”. I have to say this was picked up VERY quickly by certain news sites. Some people have been digging for years to get even a smidgen of proof to present. This is sure to become popular, especially in the US, because many erroneously believe that the two societies are so much alike. Well, perception in that case is only skin deep. And besides, it’s so practical to quote a foreign research report, since it for some reason is more credible. You don’t have as much to answer for and no one expects you to be able to. It’s simplified rhetorics for dummies.

I didn’t see the actual TV show but according to the article it sounds like they had four moralists that were against video games on one side and a single 16-year-old kid voicing the opinion of “the other side”. Talk about a scientific “debate”. Must have been some pretty lame arguments if that was the only opponent they dared to go up against …

The worst part was a government official joined in the debate and we all know whose side they’re always on.
As for making kids fat it is only part of the equation. Never forget that it is in fact food that will make you fat in conjunction with THE LACK OF exercise. Something that also plays in here is parental (especially maternal) attitudes and also other sociological trends.

Haven’t we seen this before, since the dawn of time? I mean, moralists that try to shut down what they do not approve of. Violent movies, nudity, elvis presley, rock n roll, marilyn manson, profanity, books, sacrilege … all superstition. Give it a rest. The argumentation is hypocritical and hollow at best. I can picture the same people holding a rally in the Paleolithic Age over whether cave paintings where unsuitable for young viewers and if they made Cro-magnon kids violent. Maybe that is the reason they only painted in secluded places like caves in the first place, not because they were religious sanctuaries like most people believe

Crappy attempts at metaphors aside, it is no less plausible than this sorry excuse for and disfigurement of science. Right up there with other Swedish science export “successes” like racial science of the 1930s.
*I need a sarcasm smiley ..*