Online pr0n reduces sexual assults, rapes, etc if what people do when they watch online pr0n is a substitute for the real thing.
Now comes some evidence that violent video games may reduce violent behavior.
The research, done by The Center for Educational Technology, asserts that video games — even violent ones — are beneficial for children on a scale much bigger than originally thought. The claims are in contradiction to other studies that found that extended gaming led to depression, anxiety and stunted social development, not to mention the physical effects brought on by long hours of sitting. Some studies have also linked between video games and increased violent behavior in children, arguing that simulated violence leads to real-life violence.
The center’s research involved over 1,000 children and adolescents ages six to 18, and concluded that video games were more than just entertainment; they improved learning, cognitive and interpersonal abilities, according to the study.
“They are exposed to a lot of content, be it English, math, history,” researcher Avi Warshavsky told Channel 2 news, where a report about the news study was aired. “A game is also a place where you learn failure, because you can lose a game. Failure is part of the picture. In school, they try to teach us the opposite. We’re not supposed to fail. We have to get good grades. And here there’s a psychological atmosphere that encourages second chances, which is much healthier, because it reflects real life.”
Steven Levitt offered a theory similar to the pr0n one given above.
Maybe the biggest effect of all of having these violent video games is that they’re super fun for people to play, especially adolescent boys, maybe even adolescent boys who are prone to real violence. And so if you can make video games fun enough, then kids will stop doing everything else. They’ll stop watching TV, they’ll stop doing homework, and they’ll stop going out and creating mayhem on the street.
We used to have a rule in the house that there would be rated-M PlayStation games in our house until our youngest reached 13. We bent that rule after awhile to get our kids in the habit of making their beds first thing in the morning (it worked). We told them if they made their beds each morning without being told, we'd by a Call of Duty game. Perhaps we need to bend the rule further sometime in the next year and a quarter before our youngest hits thirteen.