Book: Grand Theft Childhood
Sep. 5th, 2008 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vcmwI just finished Grand Theft Childhood, which despite the title is a well-researched, well-reasoned discussion of game playing and violence in children. It won my love in the early chapters by giving an overview of dime novel, comic, radio, and tv censorship in earlier eras that was thoughtful and research-based. (Ah, Seduction of the Innocent. Your pictures of baseball games made out of zombie body parts will never cease to amuse me.)
Then it went on to give a parent-focused lecture on causation vs. correlation, statistical significance, when statistical significance is or isn't actually real-world meaningful, etc. Not that this is new info to me, but you don't see it much in books on video games for parents. Then they walked the reader through existing studies and their own studies, trying to make the reader more informed about social science and child psychology at the same time. I was pleased.
Then it went on to give a parent-focused lecture on causation vs. correlation, statistical significance, when statistical significance is or isn't actually real-world meaningful, etc. Not that this is new info to me, but you don't see it much in books on video games for parents. Then they walked the reader through existing studies and their own studies, trying to make the reader more informed about social science and child psychology at the same time. I was pleased.
