I mean, I get it. Violent shootings happen far too often, and parents need a scapegoat. This article picks the same industry everyone else blames: video games. After all, youth play a lot of video games, and the most popular video games are usually violent. The article claims that video games can dull a child's sensitivity to violence, and that video games have an effect on children's thoughts and actions. It goes on to say that exposing the future members of society to violence at such a young age is not in our best interests, making comparisons to the recent Aurora and Sandy Hook shootings, and of course the notorious Columbine High School massacre over 15 years ago. The article points to a CNN list of the top ten video games of 2012, and how 9 of them involve shooting or guns.
It's time to stop blaming the video game industry for failures in parenting. To say children lose a sense of what's a game and what's a reality from playing hours of Call of Duty is absurd. The massive popularity of series based around war and fighting such as Halo, Call of Duty, or the Elder Scrolls does not cause children to go out and shoot up a school. Primarily, it is the parents' responsibility to know what their children can and cannot handle. All the series I just mentioned are rated M for Mature, which means stores aren't even allowed to sell them to anyone under eighteen without a parent present. So the industry does plenty to say who their games are intended for, yet parents continue to buy the games anyway. And if aiming a cursor at pixels on a screen is enough to make someone a murderer, I'd wager that person is already significantly messed up already without video games.
I'll leave it with a joke. We should stop the campaign against violent video games, because multiplayer mode is better anyway.
