I could be wrong, but I think Gabe & Tycho were not making a serious suggestion there.
Daniel
Damn, I love the scare-tactic news reports. I especially love the news previews that cry something like:
“Something in your house could kill you in under thirty minutes! Find out what this deadly resident is at 11 PM!”
The preview airs at 8 PM.
Hell, they’re fun. I never take them seriously, and I always look forward to the next one.
E.
Not so. A sexual predator stalking a kiddie from behind a snowbank will…poke through, such as it were…
-Joe
I’ve noticed more of this trend creeping into news here in Australia, too.
The way I see it, the sole purpose of the news is to provide information on the day’s events and happenings- not to sell the new Toyota Kluger (anyone else think that car sounds like a German POW Camp Commandant?) or encourage people to buy Crelm Toothpaste (With the Miracle Ingredient “Frauduline!”), or remind people that the news is bought to them by Sun-B-Gone Umbrellas, guaranteed to be 85% more effective against evil UV rays than not having a Sun-B-Gone Umbrella.
The radio is the worst for it, I’ve noticed.
And I hope you can feel it, because they’re doing it as hard as they can. 
I loved when the guy said, “Nintendo says the DS can communicate at a range of 65 feet, but we were able to communicate over 300 feet away.” That was the greatest unintentional ad for The DS ever. 300 feet is pretty damned impressive.
I love when the Onion Magazine does these:
The Onion | America's Finest News Source. <- My personal favorite
The Onion | America's Finest News Source.
The Onion | America's Finest News Source.
I have heard that all children walled up in concrete lined cellars with no means of communicating with the outside world never get molested.
It’s something to bear in mind.
You know what is so annoying about this shit? It has probably never happened, or at least there hasn’t ever been anyone caught doing it. Some easily pannicked group probably noticed that it was POSSIBlE, or maybe even the news outlet connected the dots all on their own. “It’s our duty to report what’s going on.”
All of this crap sounds really dumb. What good is it going to do for a pervert to figure out your kid’s address? Seriously? How is this any different from some wierdo in the 70’s giving out free candy to kids, or offering them a ride in their van at the playground? Not much really. Look, it’s a dangerous world out there, so I know you gotta be careful, but I don’t see technology providing a huge advantage over this. If a child predator wants to find out where kids live, he can simply find a neighborhood where kids are playing outside. How does that help him? I dunno. I seriously don’t. Getting a kid’s address can’t be that hard by conventional means after all.
Or, more realistically, instead of worrying about predators roaming the neighbourhood, if you want to be worried then be concerned about Uncle Frank or Daddy. That’s the unfortunate truth…
Some time ago, my mother and I were talking about personalizing children’s apparel. In San Antonio, where she lives, it’s not uncommon to see “Ashley, CHS Cheerleader” (or whatever, but it’s child’s first name, sport and school) decals on cars, and our conversation started with that. My mother said, “Parents shouldn’t do that! A pedophile could call Ashley by name and lure her into his house to rape her!” I replied, “Um, Mom… if a teenager is dumb enough to go off with a total stranger, it doesn’t speak well of her intelligence or her parents’ child-rearing skills.” I had to explain that kids are smart enough not to get themselves into danger and that parents generally teach “stranger danger”, two things that my own mother taught me, for cryin’ out loud.
I just tune her out now. Talking to her about the news is not worth the aggravation.
Robin
Laden or unladen? Or perhaps bin laden?
Oh noes! Terrorists are in league with pedophiles! Hide your children!
The full story at 11.
Terrorists are using GAME BOYS to learn how to molest children in airplanes! :eek:
[Stephen Colbert] Scare tactics: can they kill you and your family? Tonight, the first in a terrifying five-part series… [/Stephen Colbert]
(It’s better if you watch it. No, really.)
How ironic would it be if a child molester learns about Pictochat from fox news?
I totally agree with you on media reports that insult people’s intelligence. This is obviously stupid. Things with pedophilia are especially stupid–and I have really strong feelings about the ironic relationship between society and pedophiles. They are maligned on the news but in reality they are swept under the rug by people who refuse to believe that their friend or brother or neighbor or fill-in-the-blank could be such a monster. Because the news media presents most pedophiles as creepy internet stalkers, REAL pedophiles that for all intents and purposes seem normal are often ignored.
And you know, I’m all for blasting things that don’t have scientific backing.
That said…
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that violence in the media contributes to aggressive behavior. Lots of scientific studies have been done on this matter, and there are lots of current new ones that have nothing to do with trying to scare people, but instead to learn the truth and rationally address the potential problem that exists. I have cited cases extensively elsewhere, but here’s about 15 studies to get you started:
Link to Agression Research Studies
And I’ve done this spiel elsewhere, but here’s the gist of the findings:
- Violent media is not in itself sufficient to cause aggressive behavior, but appears to be a contributing factor.
- There is at least as strong a correlation between violent media and aggressive behavior as there is between smoking and lung cancer.
- longitudinal studies have found that there is a causal connection between 7-year-olds exposed to media violence and later aggressive behavior, but there is NO connection between 7-year olds exhibiting aggressive behavior and later becoming attracted to violent media. In other words, great pains have been taken to refute the classic “correlation does not equal causation” argument that has been lobbed at point #2.
- Generally speaking, the younger a person is when they are exposed to media violence, the more likely they are to exhibit aggressive behavior. This appears to be largely to do with the fact that 7 year olds don’t have a very firm grasp on what is real. And no, it doesn’t really matter that they insist they do. !2 year olds have less risk than 7 year olds but more risk than 23 year olds. It has a lot to do with psychosocial development.
- Random unprovoked violence is less a risk than retaliatory violence in which the aggressor believes he/she has been wronged and responds in an irrationally and disproportionally aggressive way. One of the studies I cited describes an experiment in which 8 year olds were willing to cause anonymous other kids permanent deafness in circumstances where they believed the anonymous other kids were cheating them. Kids who had just been exposed to violent media were by and large more willing to do this.
- Generally speaking, the danger is also significantly greater depending on what game is being played. Games where the player identifies strongly with the aggressor or that the player views as realistic or like real life are at a much greater risk for contributing to aggressive behavior.
- Another study, which you may find interesting, reports media activity with regards to this issue of violence in the media. The findings were basically this: in the 70’s, there was little to no evidence that violence in the media contributes to aggressive behavior, but there was extreme hype over the danger. Today there is much more evidence but almost no media coverage of these legitimate scientific studies. There is a negative correlation, historically, between the amount of evidence for this claim and the frequency with which it was addressed by the media.
So I’m all for lambasting and directing hatred toward idiotic scare-mongering journalists, for sure. But I am not all for accepting the premise that media violence is harmless simply because it is more convenient to believe it is (video games are, after all, completely awesome and fun–why would anyone be motivated to acknowledge their contribution to aggression?) and because we tend to trust our own perceptions over scientific data even when we really have no evidence that it is rational to do so.
I apologize, in advance, for my very unpopular, though well-founded opinion. 
Oh, here’s a website that looks like it has lots of links to other media aggression studies and ongoing research into the matter:
Do the studies differentiate between young kids with intelligent parents and young kids with stupid parents?
I totally agree that violent media can lead to violence. I want to see a study that will show that violent media can lead someone with at least half a brain to violence. If there is nothing like that, then we might as well worry about rock music leading to suicide.
It appears to have less to do with intelligence and more to do with factors such as narcissism (though you could reasonably argue that narcissistic kids are the product of stupid parents) and general cultural norms such as violence in the home or the neighborhood. In other words, a kid who grows up in an inner city is going to see the violence in the media supported by violent behavior in real life, and be more likely to do violent things. However, a kid in the inner city who is not exposed to violence in the media has a less likely chance of aggressive behavior than one who is, even when s/he is surrounded by violence in real life.
The key when it comes to children is neuropsychological development. A person is 12-13 years old before s/he even has a developed a frontal lobe (impulse control and decision-making center) and a person’s brain is generally not fully developed until the age of 25. Starting at birth, the brain is extremely super duper elastic and changable… and becomes less and less so on up to age 25. Anything in a child’s environment is going to affect the development of that brain one way or the other. Intelligence has nothing to do with it–it’s just a consequence of brain biology.
This is one of the reasons I’m fundamentally opposed to charging kids as adults for especially heinous crimes. It makes no sense. Children do not have the brain structure of adults. They do not have the cognitive processing capabilities of adults. They should not be treated as adults under any circumstances.
Ah, I think I see where your confusion stems from, Grasshopper.
Bolding mine.
Intelligence has a lot to do with shaping a child’s mind. You can’t seriously be saying it doesn’t.
I agree that the environment can alter a child’s brain, but only in the care of an ignorant adult will the child’s environment become a serious problem. A stupid parent will most likely mean a stupid kid until he finds someone else to help him. Parents can teach kids not to behave violently. If they can not do this until their kids turn 25 then we are in serious trouble.
I think everyone is well aware that violent media can affect stupid people in stupid ways, but where is the evidence that it can lead a child in an intelligent household to violence? If there is no evidence of that then we should not worry.
What is the point of worring about all the ways stupid people can be manipulated into doing stupid things?