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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (20945)	8/8/2001 1:02:30 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 82486

Another quote from the article - "But what about the boys who played Doom and then killed their classmates at Columbine High School? What about the Mortal Kombat player who shot his classmates in Kentucky? The makers of those games were blamed for the tragedies and sued by the parents of victims. But while this was happening, the news media all but ignored a larger trend that has been evident since those two graphically violent games were introduced -- Mortal Kombat in September 1993, Doom four months later. Up until that point, the national rate of youth violence, as measured by arrests of juveniles for homicide, had been rising for nearly a decade. Then the trend promptly reversed. ''Just as violent video games were pouring into American homes on the crest of the personal computer wave, juvenile violence began to plummet,'' said Lawrence Sherman, a criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania. ''Juvenile murder charges dropped by about two-thirds from 1993 to the end of the decade and show no signs of going back up. The rate of violence in schools hasn't increased, either -- it just gets more media coverage. If video games are so deadly, why has their widespread use been followed by reductions in murder?'' In an adult's ideal playground, there would be no violent fantasies, no aggression, no hierarchies or cliques, no sexual segregation. By playing with girls, boys would pick up some of their verbal gifts and emotional savvy. Girls would pick up boys' techniques for competing and working in large groups. But in a real playground, most boys and girls don't do that. On my last afternoon in Chicago, I accompanied Angel to a playground near his home, and it was no different from the scene described by social scientists decades ago. The boys were running around in a large group playing dodge ball (still legal in this park); the girls were standing around or using the swings, chatting with one or two friends. Both sexes were still ignoring grown-ups' advice to play together, and maybe they knew best. Certainly they had been right about computers. Grown-ups' angst over the digital gender gap looks quaintly irrelevant now that teenage girls are addicted to instant messaging and the majority of Internet users in the States are female. Girls had no trouble adapting to computers once the machines did something that interested them. While academics plotted to get boys and girls playing together on computers, the kids seemed to recognize all along that it was a lame idea. "

To: TimF who wrote (20945)	8/8/2001 1:17:36 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 82486

It calls the "coolest" or most popular kids "alpha-pups" and talks about how a company is trying to find them and get them to promote games. I had heard the term "alpha-pups" quite a while ago. I haven't read the article yet, but I know that that technique is common to marketing and change management. I used to use it all the time as a manager when I wanted to make a cultural change--get the leaders on the staff on board and then watch it spread. It's hard, though, to see merchandisers being so cynical about selling product to kids. Karen