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.
That joke was...actually pretty good, haha. Anyways, I completely agree with you in that video games definitely do not cause kids to go berserk and start murdering people. If violent video games should be banned due to the influence they have, then why not ban The Hunger Games or Lord of the Rings? These are extremely violent also. Who cares if they're books/movies? After all video games are just other ways of telling a story (a superior way if you look at it as seeing the story through the eyes of the protagonist). The point is that the world's always been jacked and video game violence does not influence that. The kid has a problem in the first place if he decides to go on a homicidal rampage. Thanks media
ReplyDeleteThat was actually a pretty creative joke. Anyway, just like you and Matt pointed out, video games don't cause someone to blur the difference of the gaming world and actual reality. If someone decides to go on a "kill streak", it wouldn't be because of playing Call of Duty, it would be because the person has already made up their mind. The reason that a person would do this is because they might have a mental illness or more likely, they lack parental guidance in life. So really, the blame shouldn't be solely placed on the shooter, but also on the shooter's parents for failing to put structure in their child's life and also failing to be a good role model. If parents were more strict and observant in their children's lives, the whole world would be better.
ReplyDeleteYeah video games as a scapegoat has got to stop. There are hundreds of thousands of kids and young adults playing violent video games in America and in the world. The percentage of these that become domestic killers has got to be to small to even be considered. If parents still think video games are problem, don't let your kids play the video games.
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