# Another infant death linked to games - a halfway plausible link this time round? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 1, 2011, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-infant-death-linked-to-games-a-halfway-plausible-link-this-time-round/576726 "2011-04-01T05:51:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-infant-death-linked-to-games-a-halfway-plausible-link-this-time-round/576726/21 "2011-04-03T20:46:02Z")
> [@shijinn](#): > > as more and more incidents of game related deaths occur, we might want to examine the phenomenon more closely rather than dismiss it as statistics. i guess i’m simply starting to doubt if it is always true that a game addict would have found some other more harmful addiction as a matter of course. This is the first thing you should do: Read up on [process addiction](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_addiction) so you have the slightest clue as to what you are talking about. Second, know that it is NOT being dismissed. Third, consider this: An hypothetical mother has a process addiction to shopping (a relatively common one as these things go) and leaves a child in a hot car so she can go to a dress sale at the mall. The child dies of heat stroke in the car. Do you blame the store for the child’s death? If not, how can you reconcile blaming a video game for a child’s death? ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-infant-death-linked-to-games-a-halfway-plausible-link-this-time-round/576726/22 "2011-04-04T02:20:06Z")
> [@Mosier](#): > > Nothing in that article says either animal was killed. The article says the family owned 2 dogs, one of which killed their son. It then goes on to say the family asked animal control to take away both dogs. There was absolutely nothing in the article laying blame on the pit bull. That article. Lots of other articles at the time did, I just can’t find them now. And both dogs were killed. You act like you think I’m lying. Why don’t you question everyone else in such detail? ---
**Author:** ![Algorithm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/algorithm/32/12204_2.png) [@Algorithm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algorithm)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-infant-death-linked-to-games-a-halfway-plausible-link-this-time-round/576726/23 "2011-04-04T03:13:12Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > That article. Lots of other articles at the time did, I just can’t find them now. And both dogs were killed. > > You act like you think I’m lying. Why don’t you question everyone else in such detail? You act like this thread is about pit bulls. Why don’t you take your hijack somewhere else? ---
**Author:** ![shijinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@shijinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shijinn)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-infant-death-linked-to-games-a-halfway-plausible-link-this-time-round/576726/24 "2011-04-04T04:09:05Z")
> [@A Monkey With a Gun](#): > > … Third, consider this: An hypothetical mother has a process addiction to shopping (a relatively common one as these things go) and leaves a child in a hot car so she can go to a dress sale at the mall. The child dies of heat stroke in the car. Do you blame the store for the child’s death? If not, how can you reconcile blaming a video game for a child’s death? thanks for the link. i think your hypothetical might work better if the child got lost in the store premises or something, to better align it? regardless, it seems to me the store’s influence should only apply during the mother’s presence in the store itself. any distraction done would be limited by how much money she have and the muscles on her legs. of the other behaviors listed in your link: gambling is limited by how slow you can burn your money; food is limited by how much you can stomach; sex and pornography is limited by your refractory period; exercise is limited by your endurance; cutting by your pain threshold; work is similarly not limited as online gaming, but at least it pays. once a person had access to an online computer, the only limiting factor would be the ability to sit in one spot for long stretches of time. free gaming, a virtual social aspect, games designed to trigger your impulse control etc etc all work together to keep you glued to the monitor. i think most people would agree that you can severely screw up a child if you introduce gambling, food, sex, pornography and cutting to him at an early age; but an ever growing number would not bat an eyelid at a child hooked on facebook games. ---
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-infant-death-linked-to-games-a-halfway-plausible-link-this-time-round/576726/25 "2011-04-04T05:33:49Z")
You don’t understand the core concept of process addiction, do you? It doesn’t matter what the compulsion is - eating, shopping, internet use, whatever. What matters is the person who suffers from the addiction has an overwhelming compulsion to perform that activity to the detriment of all else. Sure, someone may develop a behavioral addiction to video games, but the psychology behind that addiction is in no way different from any other behavioral addiction. It is not the activity that is causing the addiction - it is the illness. You can’t blame compulsive over eating on food. You can’t blame compulsive shopping on commerce. And you can’t blame compulsive game playing on the games themselves. You have to look at the psychology of the person - not the activity itself. In your zeal to blame video games for something, anything, you are reversing cause and effect. Please read a bit more about it. And learn to use the shift key. Also, did you just say that you can really screw up a child by introducing him to _food_ at an early age?!!! Yep, you did. ---
**Author:** ![shijinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@shijinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shijinn)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-infant-death-linked-to-games-a-halfway-plausible-link-this-time-round/576726/26 "2011-04-04T05:46:40Z")
that is exactly what the OP is about - doubt over assigning of blame totally on the person. if you replace a child’s daily menu with McDonald’s, do you blame the resultant fat kid with attendant host of problems on the child, or do we blame whoever enabled his diet? ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-infant-death-linked-to-games-a-halfway-plausible-link-this-time-round/576726/27 "2011-04-04T14:20:32Z")
Conjecture ahead: 10 to 1 he put the pillow on the baby in the first place to muffle its crying so his team-mates could hear what he was saying, or so that he could concentrate, during the raid. I mean how does a baby get a pillow on its face? I’m not saying he wanted to kill the kid, just that he’s a very stupid and selfish person. Some people are scum. ---
**Author:** ![Nadir](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nadir/32/7302_2.png) [@Nadir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nadir)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-infant-death-linked-to-games-a-halfway-plausible-link-this-time-round/576726/28 "2011-04-04T16:17:07Z")
The title of this thread should have been: “Another Infant Death Linked to Parental Stupidity” ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-infant-death-linked-to-games-a-halfway-plausible-link-this-time-round/576726/29 "2011-04-04T19:52:00Z")
> [@shijinn](#): > > > [@Merneith](#): > > > > 1. There’s no evidence that gamers are more likely to let their child die of neglect than people involved in other activities. > > 1. not the OP where the parent was aware of the pillow atop the baby. You’re trying to look at one example and generalizing it to be applicable to all gamers. The actions of this one person, acting on his own, is not evidence about gamers as a group. > [@](#): > > > [@Merneith](#): > > > > In point of fact, children die from neglect all the time while their parents are engaged in non-gaming activities. > > 1. while true, this is also not my OP. my suggestion being that this is different from other ‘Blame the Pitbull’ links. You haven’t proved how it’s different. You and kanicbird just insist that it must be, because gaming is so involved. > [@](#): > > > [@Merneith](#): > > > > WoW has 12 million active subscribers (I, my sister and my mom are three of them.) There is no epidemic of children dying while their parents play WoW. > > 1. hence the word unappreciated. don’t you agree that more and more people get more screen time than face time? a typical white collar adult spends much of the entire work day and leisure time in front of a screen. A) Unless you can demonstrate that there is a statistically significant number of children dying because their parents are online (and you can’t) - your argument that gaming is more deadly than tvs or cellphones is hopeless. B) It sounds like you’re trying to make an argument along the lines that people who spend all day on the computer are less caring now than in the past because they’re online and not in person. In other words, it sounds like you’re conflating “screen time” with “gaming”. They’re different activities with different probably outcomes. And again, you need to demonstrate that the children of computer users die of neglect as a result of their parents’ computer use in greater numbers than children die of neglect while their parents cook/clean/read/nap/watch tv/etc. You’re not going to be able to do that. Barring actual evidence, talk about an “epidemic” is silly regardless of how metaphorical you want to make it. > [@shijinn](#): > > > [@Merneith](#): > > > > 1. The loser Dad would have been a loser no matter what he was doing, if it was golf or working on his car or whatever his hobby was. That’s because he himself is a bad parent - not because his hobby is new and scary. > > 1. again true, but missing the gist of my OP. the same parent in the OP might have taken the time to remove that damned pillow had he been distracted by something else. the nitwit engaged on a tv might pause it and continue later, he could say “hang on” to his friend, he could get back to his nap. Or maybe he would be so caught up talking to his friend on the phone that he’d lose track of time and not notice that his kid had gone silent. Maybe he wouldn’t have heard the kid over the sound of the laundry machine where he was doing the ironing. Maybe the doorbell would ring and he’d be distracted by arguing with some Witnesses. Maybe the hot teenagers next door would be sunbathing topless. My arguments are no less likely than yours. > [@](#): > > a tv requires your attention and your eyes. a phone requires your attention and your ears. a game requires all those in addition to your hands and thus the rest of you in terms of mobility\*. online gaming is designed to trigger your gambling instincts, handing out micro rewards in a social network. the same nitwit totally absorbed in a tv program or talking on the phone would be doubly so in an online game. Conjecture on your part. Even if games are a problem _for this one person_ - it doesn’t mean that games in general are dangerous, that games in general are more involving for everybody who plays them than different activities are for other people, or that children of gamers are in bigger danger than, say, children of marathon runners who are working out everyday. > [@shijinn](#): > > taking an extreme example from the past - when you have spent 3 to 5 hours in a dungeon crawl with 39 other people in your online peer group, as the main tank in the middle of an involved boss fight, you’re positioned to be completedly devoted to the screen in front of you. peer pressure, time investment, game design, some other buzzwords, blah blah blah. this is getting to be TLDR material so i’m not going to give a point by point rebuttal of your second list of 4 pointers. Dude, I’ve done that. Well, not a tank. But the point is, nobody I play with has any trouble going afk for bio breaks, beverages, family demands or pet problems. But the question I have for you **shijinn** , is: if you were the main tank for a 40 man raid and in the final battle of a 4 hour fight - would you be so caught up that you’d let your baby suffocate? I don’t believe you would - because the problem is not the game. The problem started with the individual. There is no evidence for generalizing beyond that. > [@](#): > > \*\* i’m just going to wrap up here and say that you have misunderstood my OP. i’m sorry if i was vague. > > you’re missing the point entirely if you’re thinking single player casual games with normal, healthy adults are killing babies and puppies. i’m talking about online game addiction, a phenomenon still new enough not to have sufficient research or cites, and its influence on that baby whose pacifier has been replaced by an iPhone. Honestly, I would guess that individuals with personality problems could be just as likely to become addicted to Bejewelled or Solitaire as an MMORPG. Even the massive single player games like Oblivion or Fallout might click for an obsessive individual. Farmville got a lot of press lately for addictiveness. Or hell, Pokemon. That’s my personal crack pipe. That’s the only game I ever walked away from because I was starting to obsess about it. In so far as some people become obsessed with games, there’s no rational reason why certain games trigger that for each individual. The games themselves don’t cause problems in people who don’t have problems to begin with. Some people are drawn to this or that game, not because the game is insidious, but because it happens to scratch that individual’s psychic itch. Two-thirds of all households in America include gamers. There’ve been what - a handful? not quite a dozen, even? - kids who’ve died from neglect while their parents were playing online games. There just is no evidence that gaming is a problem for the general population, as opposed to being a problem for a few individuals. ---
**Author:** ![NinetyWt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/cc9497/32.png) [@NinetyWt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinetyWt)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2011, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-infant-death-linked-to-games-a-halfway-plausible-link-this-time-round/576726/30 "2011-04-05T03:14:58Z")
[QUOTE=Merneith] 1. Plenty of kids have died while their parents watch tv or talk on the phone or do housework or\*\* nap\*\*. [/QUOTE] (my bolding) > [@kanicbird](#): > > Gaming engages the person much more then the above, audio/visual/interactive/giving a different body which can get hurt in another world. Y’all missed the worst part. Gaming engages a person more than SLEEPING? Come on. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-infant-death-linked-to-games-a-halfway-plausible-link-this-time-round/576726.md?page=1)