Well Being of Our Children

Well Being of Our Children
by Sandra Hawkins

Do video games promote violence? This question became a predominant debate heard throughout the United States after the Columbine Massacre in 1999. The killers were known to have intense interest in the computer/video game “Doom” in which you control a soldier who runs through a massive maze-like building shooting everything in sight. This game seems to correspond with the teen killers actions in the Columbine massacre. Was their inclination for violent video games a factor in their real world violence, or was it just a twist of fate? Some psychologists theorize that violence is a learned behavior. Children learn by imitation. If this statement holds true, then are we not responsible to mandate the regulation of violent video games accessible to our children? The level of exposure and alarming growth rate of violent behavior being portrayed as an acceptable form of entertainment for children need to end. Children are a blank canvas; what parents, peers and society paint on them will help determine how they will live their lives. Parents need to step up to bat and accept responsibility for the decisions made within their parental control regarding the allowance of detrimental influences in their children’s lives because we are entrusted with their welfare.

Do we have a moral and ethical obligation to regulate video games and movies? On Martin Luther King Day 2002, the new video game “Ethnic Cleansing” was released by Resistance Records a company owned by the “National Alliance”, the largest and most active neo-Nazi organization in the United States. The objective of the game is to kill “sub-humans”-i.e. Blacks and Latinos and their “masters”, the Jews. “Patterned after popular mainstream games such as 'Quake' and 'Doom', the game turns racially motivated violence into entertainment” (Video Games). Racist groups are now using video games to promote violence against ethnic groups, manifested and designed along the guidelines of the accepted and saturated market of violent video games. “While the most sophisticated racist game available online, Ethnic Cleansing is not unique” (Video Games). Most of these games are much simpler than Ethnic Cleansing but they serve a similar purpose in that they allow players to interact in a racist environment in which they can indulge their fantasies. To validate the concept that video games such as Ethnic Cleansing contribute to racism, hate, and violence, we would also have to concede that all violent video games that imply murdering people for no justifiable cause alter one’s perception as to what is morally and ethically right or wrong.

Studies have confirmed that dramatic learning does occur through video game playing. Chris Crawford’s book, The Art of Computer Game Design, states that the primary motivation in game playing is to learn (Crawford). In his column about the Columbine Massacre, Jon Dvorak, a well-known computer columnist, stresses the educational nature of games. “Whether its Doom teaching you how to do maximum damage in a “kill them all” situation, a racing game teaching you how to handle a car, or a skeet shooting game, skills can be transferred from games to real life situations”(Dvorak). Dvorak's examples were all personal, but other studies have confirmed that dramatic learning does occur through computer/video games.

While studies have shown that skills and learning are developed through computer/video game playing, psychological studies of the link between violence and computer games are inconclusive. After an extensive four-year study, the Australian Government concluded, “none of the independent research published to date has demonstrated serious effects of aggressive game play on young peoples behavior.” The position of those who state that there is a definite link between video games and violence appears to be based upon individual cases and spurious connections rather than upon carefully conducted studies. The most that can be said is that a marked preference for violent video games may be a manifestation of pre-existent violent tendencies in an individual (Choi). Based on research and lack thereof, we are left with the knowledge that violent video games do lead to dramatic learning, skill acquisition and are a contributing factor to violence. Therefore, someone is responsible for children learning and developing in the realms of violence.

Is it the idea of the violence that attributes to the success of these games, being able to destroy things without any repercussions? Educational videos are not selling; the ones that sell are the games with fantasy violence. The excitement of the chase, the gratification of the kill, these are the fundamental characteristics of the best selling video games. Based on a recent non-biased survey conducted amongst random individuals in Lynchburg, Virginia, 93 percent of teenagers attributed the excitement and lack of repercussions as a vital part of the stimulation to play violent video games. The survey results also implied that young married couples of children viewed the violent video games as “only fantasy” and “lacking influence on their children’s behavior”. The overall majority surveyed in all age ranges was “undecided” as to whether violent video games contributed to violent behavior, as to the age suitable for children to participate in violent video games and what levels of violence was acceptable (Survey). As Jerome Kagan observed, we are in danger of loosing our moral standards when our emotional reactions decline, e.g., when we see violence on TV or in horror movies and are not repulsed, when we see starving children and do not scream, “this must stop . . . . Negative emotions—indignation when injustice occurs—are a vital part of being moral. We should treasure and encourage these intolerant emotional reactions to immorality, not mimic the psychopath’s indifference to law breaking. Moral action is based on emotions, not just on ideas of justice. Wrong-doing, our own and others’, should offend us.”(Kagan)

Taking into consideration the lack of benefits and detrimental effects that the average person attaches to violent video games, this alone should give one cause to question the legitimacy and social acceptance of such games.

Do we need to curtail cultural influences that have created an ethnic of violence that leads children to violence? Interviewed on morning television shows a day after a shooting in El Cajon, California, Attorney General John Ashcroft called on the entertainment industry to “start helping us devote ourselves to an ethic of resolving anger or problems in a way other than violence. Even the news industry can report incidents like this in ways that maybe don’t promote copycat replications. The entertainment industry, with its video games and the like, which sometimes literally reach shooting and all, we’ve got to ask ourselves how do we as a culture respond to be more responsible”(7). In citing violent video games, Ashcroft went further than he has previously to suggest that violent entertainment could be partially to blame for students’ turning to guns and violence. The administration is “calling upon others to try and think of what they can do to be more responsible and to help curtail the culture, which apparently provides for our responses this way, which is a terrible thing”(10). Ashcroft would seem to confirm that violent video games have a negative impact on society, but at the same time, he is unwilling or unable to isolate where and with whom the responsibility begins and ends with the very existence of the videos. While Ashcroft may question where and with whom the responsibility of the existence of violent video games reside, adults already know that the responsibility for the emotional and physical well being of a child lies with the parent.

Quoting Mahatma Gandhi, “Seven sins: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle”, makes one question if we need to look at the deeper issues involved with violence being instituted in today’s society. Are the violent video games being accepted and institutionalized in our society due to a hidden agenda or are they simply a result of a society with lost virtues laying in wait to be victimized once again by the greed of man? Is our government attempting to raise a society of warriors or are we allowing corporate greed to raise a society of rebels? We are allowing are children to be taught through video games and television. The outcome will be either children who have learned to fight against injustice or children who will have learned to justify their unjust actions.

The statistics of the past and present support the fact that children who are subjected to or witness violence in their home will grow up to repeat such behavior by subjecting themselves or their own children to violence or by becoming an abuser. If we allow children to act out or participate in violent video games without a sense of right and wrong and the reasoning behind the moral and ethical resolution, we are removing all logic from their minds and their ability to separate fantasy from reality. As adults if we cannot justify whether the violent video games are appropriate or not, how can we expect our children to determine right from wrong when the people they trust cannot? Would you give yourself or your child a medication not knowing the positive or damaging effects of the medication? The disturbing thought is that many people would. We have become a society of people that rely on others to decide what is acceptable and what is not in all aspects of our lives.

Living in a free country, our citizens have given up their greatest freedom: the right to think for themselves. We accept and take for granted, as the right choice, the decisions made by others. For the past twenty-five years, we have been instructed in written, verbal and media outlets to “be your child’s friend”. Recently the same institutions of the “more knowledgeable” have realized this approach did more harm than good. The same “more knowledgeable” people’s new motto is “Your child needs you to be their parent, not their friend”. So, whose shoulders do we now lay the blame on for the confused children lying in the wake of the past twenty-five years’ theory on parental and child relationships? At whose feet will we lay the blame in twenty years for the damaged and destroyed lives violent video games will contribute to? Society as a whole has found the ultimate scapegoat; instead of holding ourselves as individuals accountable for the painting of our children’s lives, we turn our heads and take the easy road to self-destruction. We choose to lay blame on others under the guise of “we didn’t know”. Our children blame us, we blame the government, and the government blames society. Shifting the responsibility of our children’s upbringing and their future for lack of parental accountability is inexcusable. We need to take responsibility for the decisions in our lives and the lives of our children. “To thine own self be true”.

Works Cited

Ashcroft: Video Games are part of violence problem. 23 March. 2001.

USA Today. 2 Dec. 2002. http://www.usatoday.com

Crawford, Chris. The Art of Computer Game Design. 1982.

Choi, Suzanne. “Computer Games and Violence: A Child’s Friend or Foe?”

Dvorak, John C. “The Doom Factor.” June 29, 1999.

Kagan, Jerome. 1984. Conscience and Escape From One’s Own Conscience. 3 Dec. 2002. http://mhnet.org/psyhelp/chap3/chap3n.htm.

Video Games. 19 Feb. 2002. Racist Groups Using Computer Games to Promote Violence Against Blacks, Latinos and Jews. 3 Dec 2002. http://www.adl.org/videogames/default.asp.

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