In the Agora: Everything Bad

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June 14, 2005

Everything Bad

Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter, Steven Johnson. Riverhead Books, 2005. Hardcover. 238 pp.

Popular culture is worthy of serious study. By this I do not mean that South Park or Grand Theft Auto should be analyzed as if they were Great Art; in fact, I would argue that such comparisons only serve to cheapen art and rob entertainment of its scruffy but real charms. Nevertheless, the assumption that television and video games are nothing but puerile trash has robbed us of a real opportunity: to study what makes them addictive, what consequences they have on the development of the human brain, and what their power tells us about human nature.

In start contrast to the work of most pundits, Steven Johnson's book champions television and video games, arguing that for the past thirty years popular culture has grown increasingly complex, and that this complexity is responsible for a steady upwards trend in American IQ scores. This effect is known as the Flynn Effect after its discoverer, James Flynn, who noticed in the late seventies that in the previous forty-six years average IQ scores had increased by 13.8 points. The trend has continued unabated up to the present day, although it often goes unnoticed because of the fact that IQ scores are normalized so that the average is always 100.

Johnson argues that this correlation reflects causation, that more stimulating popular entertainment has acted as mental exercise, helping people flex just the sort of cognitive muscles that IQ assesses. To back up his claims he mainly offers in-depth comparisons of 1970's entertainment to modern-day diversions. A typical episode of Dragnet, for example, contained exactly one plotline, which inexorably plodded its way to a fixed destination over the course of an hour. The Sopranos, on the other hand, winds together as many as nine different plot threads in a single hour. The threads are often carried over from previous episodes, interact in complex ways in single scenes, and fail to resolve themselves at the conclusion of the episode. And video games, as Johnson points out, are not mindless invitations to mash buttons. Modern adventure games such as Zelda and Grand Theft Auto are fiendishly hard, requiring the player to figure out the rules as he or she goes along and keep in mind sets of nested objectives that, when written down, fill three book pages--just for a single moment in the game.

Unfortunately, that is more or less the extent of the evidence offered. Any competent observer will have noticed that popular culture has grown more complex over the last thirty years, and the upwards trend of the average American's IQ cannot be denied. As of yet, however, there exists not a single shred of evidence connecting these two trends. In fact, the only study Johnson cites examining the cognitive effects of popular culture is a study at the University of Rochester published last year that examined the visual abilities of avid video-game players and non-gamer controls. Video-game players were surprisingly adept at various visual recognition tasks such as counting the number of objects on a screen as quickly as possible. Non-gamers exposed to 12 hours of the WWII game Medal of Honor showed a similar effect.

Counting the number of objects on a screen may seem a far cry from the abilities required by IQ tests. Ultimately, however, the lack of evidence marshaled by Johnson is not his fault. Cognitive scientists have criminally understudied the effects of immersion in today's media, especially video games. There are more papers--many more--about the effects of playing the violin on the brains and minds of children, despite the fact that children, on average, spend vastly more time playing video games. Before we decry the stupefying influence of today's culture--or, indeed, before we praise its cognitive benefits--we need to take a good, hard look at what its consequences really are.

Seriously studying popular culture will not only help us understand how modern society is changing us, but it may also give us some insight into the less mutable aspects of human nature. Video games, for example, can--and I speak from all-too extensive personal experience--seize the mind like a vice. What is it about the combination of violence, scavenging, exploration, and steady but variable reward that proves so frighteningly addicting? Why are people willing to spend their free time pretending to mine imaginary minerals in badly drawn fantasy worlds, just so they can get enough play money to buy houses that don't exist? What does the spontaneous social organization of such online worlds tell us about human social behavior? Can the elements that make video games addicting somehow be abstracted and applied to education? If players had to learn organic chemistry in order to get past a certain section of Half-life 3, would they diligently do so? The study of human behavior cannot afford to overlook such a widespread, bizarre, and potentially enlightening aspect of today's culture.

Posted by Adam Tierney at June 14, 2005 05:04 AM

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The popularity of these complex, detailed games has to be connected with the loss of detail and excitement in everyday life. These gamers don't have to deal with violence, scavenging, exploration, and steady but variable reward in their everyday lives, but they crave the adventure that is missing, so off they go to recreate the Roman Empire. If we had a few more mountain lions or RPG-wielding aliens walking the streets, and treasure chests buried in caverns under our cities and towns, maybe youth wouldn't be drawn to fantasy adventure.

Posted by: Adam Packer at June 14, 2005 10:54 AM | permalink

Many of you who listen to Hugh Hewitt know who David Allen White is so this may come of interest to you as I found it well thought out, and we all know White is a genius. He makes the case against modern film and television as it relates to the deterioration of language through his Catholic lens with an expectedly well reasoned conclusion, read it here.

Posted by: charles at June 14, 2005 12:11 PM | permalink

The examples you cited for video games are nothing compared to other games. What is the most popular computer game ever? The Sims. It consists of evaluating relationships, tracking many things that aren't just the location of things on the screen and strategic planning. One of the most popular categories of games on the PC is the RTS (Real Time Strategy) game, which as the name implies definitely requires intense thought and planning as does an RPG. Consider also the non-video version of Dungeons & Dragons with its rules and fairly complex game system and the creativity demanded to be a good Dungeon Master. Look at games like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh and how amazingly young the players are who track so many things to do well in the games.

Posted by: Jim S at June 15, 2005 12:02 AM | permalink

See? I told you that even though I'm 36, work for minimum wage and live with my parents, the fact that I'm EXCELLENT at computer and video games proves I'm a genius!

Posted by: Jim Rockford at June 15, 2005 12:55 PM | permalink

Jim,

I don't play real-time strategy games, so I can't really address your belief that they offer greater complexity than adventure games, but I do think that role-playing games don't necessarily require much planning, aside from making sure one has enough healing potions (or whatever they're called in a particular game). I literally got up and made myself a sandwich during some of the Knights of the Old Republic fights.

On the other hand, I had to memorize and carefully use about fifty pages of information to beat Nethack, so I do see what you mean, but I don't think the genre as a whole is more complex. The new Prince of Persia, for example, managed to extract real thought from me on a number of occasions.

Posted by: Tierney at June 15, 2005 02:19 PM | permalink

June 14, 2005

Everything Bad

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