I genuinely don't know whether violent video games implies more violent behaviour, but I am 100% sure that this chart doesn't prove or disprove anything.
You offered a suggestion that was based on a false premise. I posted a chart that shows that your premise was false -- nothing more, nothing less. You responded by pointing out that the chart doesn't "prove" anything. This is true. It can't prove causation, because there's no effect to observe in the first place. You might as well ask whether cell phone radiation is responsible for our present worldwide bubonic plague epidemic.
Your beef is with whoever told you that the world was becoming more dangerous, not those who post statistics that paint the opposite picture. Somebody lied to you. Find out why.
> You offered a suggestion that was based on a false premise.
I haven't, I am not taf2. I was just saying that this inverse correlation that you see may be due to other factors or may not even be statistically significant. We're missing a lot of data here (e.g. how does the juvenile crimes rate fluctuates prior to 1990).
The chart plots video game revenue and youngster violent crimes over time. If there is a correlation there, it is negative. It does disprove the theory of video game caused violence.
Yes that's my main point: this plot does not prove the correlation.
If you look at a bigger picture e.g. (maybe here [1], altough it's not technically the same metric)
there was a peak around 94. The peak and the relative low value before the peak cannot be explained by video games.
And that my second point: no one ever claimed that violence is only caused by video games. Clearly the blue curve is under the influence of (many) other factors, so it's very hard to determine whether there is a correlation without knowing these other factors.
But let me say it once again, it's a possibility that video games reduce violence. I am simply saying that if think this is the case because of this plot, you're probably biased.
> Yes that's my main point: this plot does not prove the correlation.
I don't get your line of reasoning. Let's go through all the scientific method steps:
The hypothesis is: Videogames cause violent behaviour in youngsters.
The test for this hypothesis is: If videogames cause violent behaviour in youngsters, then we should find a positive correlation between the rise in popularity of videogames and youngster violence.
The hypothesis failed the test. The correlation either is not there, or it is there but is negative. We can conclude, from the fact that we did not find a positive correlation, that the hypothesis is false.
> We can conclude, from the fact that we did not find a positive correlation, that the hypothesis is false.
We could if it was a lab experiment where the only factor that varies would be the popularity of violent video games. But it's not.
It's entirely plausible the the increase of home entertainment has indeed reduced the rate of juvenile crimes. (kids don't stay in the street any more). Yet it doesn't say much about how violent games induce violent behaviours.
We can. If we didn't have to account for other factors, we wouldn't even require tools like correlation and linear regression. These are statistical tools needed to deal with signals affected by both error and multiple inputs. These characteristics do not prevent analysis, though care must be taken.
Your explanation is obviously possible, but it does not preclude my conclusion. If your explanation for the signal correlation is true, then video games account for comparatively little youngster aggression.
I am terribly sorry for the ad-hominem, but I think, at this moment, you need to brush up on statistics 101. The arguments used are typical of pre-statistical studies, and HN is really not the place to be taught fundamentals.
This chart is less biased (y axis starts at 0) and the correlation is less obvious.
The correlation is actually -0.6557, which is significant but probably not as high as you would expect from the first chart. But ok the correlation between game software revenue and juvenile violence is probably here (we're talking about ~20 data points...). To go further and conclude anything about violent games, you would need at least the proportion of violent games among games, we don't have it here.
Here's the data that I've extracted from the pixel position. It's not 100% accurate, but it should be good enough.
