Video Games: Killing Our Children?

Noah killed Nancy and a video game was to blame ("Evolving Entertainment Technology: Can New Types of Fun Lead To New Types of Liability" Jenifer Jones pg 198). Technology is an ever adapting presence in today's world. It is evolving and changing almost every aspect of everyday life, for better or for worse. With this increase in technological advances comes a change in the entertainment that people embrace in their lives. These advances in entertainment brought us video games. It cannot be argued that video games have become a mainstay in the entertainment industry and almost every movie released has a video game paired with it, or in some cases, a video game is adapted into a movie. With the popularity of video games on the rise there is bound to be some sort of repercussion. That inconvenience is how the amount of violent activities that adolescents partake in is on the rise... or so people would be led to believe. However, there has not yet been enough research to prove video games do or do not increase aggression in adolescence.

On April 23, 200 the American Psychological Association released a report entitled "Violent Video Games May Increase Aggression" ("Video Games and Aggressive Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors in the Laboratory in Life" Craig A. Anderson and Karen E. Dill). This report presented results that suggested that violent video games increase the amount of aggression in youth. This was accepted as fact until the June of 2010. When the APA once again released a report on video games, this report stated "Video games may increase aggression in some but not others." (Anderson). This article contained multiple opinions that were the opposite of the views that they had stated earlier. By presenting two opposing opinions as fact the APA created a rift in both the psychological and sociological communities. Half of the community believed that video games increased aggression while the other half did not believe this.

There are many viable reasons that could lead people to believe that video games increase violent tendencies in children. One reason is that children are influenced greatly by the media, including video games, movies and music. Another reason is that video games can lead children to believe that overly violent acts are encouraged or rewarded. One other reason that people often state is that the children who play these games are not yet psychologically developed to the point where they can separate the fiction of video games from the non-fiction of life.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and in the case of children there is no exception to the rule. Children can often bee seen imitation their parents or other influential people in their lives. However children do not only copy those who are directly present in their lives. They also copy those who are glorified in one way or another (Slaby 174). One example of this is superheroes and villains. Every year for Halloween, thousands of Batmen and Supermen wander the streets in search of candy. At first glance this may not seem like a form of imitation, but upon a closer look the child's true ambitions can be seen. The child sees Batman and Superman immortalized in comic books, movies and video games almost every day. Why would a child not want to be viewed as a hero by millions of people around the world? They see their heroes everyday standing up and fighting against crime and they want to fight crime as well. However comic books heroes are not the only ones being presented to children in today's world. Video game characters are often seen outside of video games.

Cross-marketing has led to commercials where Master Chief from Halo is advertising Mountain Dew. Mario is no longer a fictional game character, by selling new Fords he has crossed over from the fictional realm to the non-fictional realm in a young child's mind. This leads to children imitating Mario and other video game characters. However, a child's sense of right and wrong is not fully developed until the middle of the teenage years. By this time video games have already reached children. Children see Tommy Verceti from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and think he is a hero. They may wish to emulate Tommy's adventures, although they don't realize if Tommy were a real person he would be a criminal. But, since Tommy has the opportunity to be featured in Coca-Cola commercials and video games he must be one of the good guys. It is easy to see how a young child could view a professional criminal as a celebrity or even a hero due to violent video games. With hero status given so easily, children can be misguided into violent acts.

Another reason that can lead people to believe that video games increase aggression in children is that overly violent acts are rewarded. Today some most popular games are first person shooters such as the Battlefield and Call of Duty series'. Games like this have a heavy focus on competitive multiplayer modes. In these modes, players are rewarded for multiple uninterrupted killings. These rewards are often more violent means of killing such as attack dogs or fighter jets. Thus reward system can often lead to an increase in violent tendencies.

In "Seeing The World Through Mortal Kombat Colored Glasses," Steven Kirsh states that "Children playing violent video games suggest more retaliation and more punishment for children playing nonviolent video games"("Seeing The World Through Mortal Kombat-colored Glasses: Violent Video Games and the Development of a Short-term Hostile Attribution Bias" Steven J. Kirsh pg 178). In the study he refers to, two groups of children played two different video games. One group played Mortal Kombat while the other group played Street Fighter. While both games are fighting games Mortal Kombat is significantly more violent and offers finishing moves that feature acts such as decapitations. The children were presented with the same event, a simple theft. The children that played Mortal Kombat suggested more severe punishments for the person committing the crime.Kirsh also stated that this would not just happen to children who played Mortal Kombat but other violent games as well. This is due to the fact that most violent games reward players with more violent weapons (Kirsh 181). It is easy to understand why associating rewards with violence can lead to adolescence indulging on violent impulses.

Another reason that is often stated when discussing violent video games is that they are not age appropriate. Supporters of this argument often state the children who play these games have not been given enough time to reach the peak of their mental growth. Terri Day, along with Richard and Ryan Hall, state, "Video games increase violence because they teach players how to be violent and reinforce violent tendencies" (Day, Hall, and Hall 315). They continue to argue that children could not possibly be developed enough to fully seperate fiction from reality in these games.

One example of this lack of enforcement is the story of Nancy Yates which is often used as a parable and a cautionary tale. Nancy was a twelve years old at the time of his death. Nancy received a copy of the gamed Mortal Kombat for Christmas. Nancy and his best friend Noah enjoyed playing the game, and it quickly became their favorite pastime. One day Nancy and Noah no longer wanted to simply play the game, they wanted to be the game. Nancy and Noah began to mimic the fights featured in the game one day while Nancy's parents were out. Eventually things reached a point where Noah stabbed Nancy through the chest causing him to bleed out almost instantly. This led to Nancy's mother suing Midway games over the death of her son. She received no money for her lawsuit, but she did succeed in one area. Her lawsuit succeeded in creating the Electronic Software Ratings Board. The ESRB rates games by age based on many factors including violence. Mortal Kombat was later rated M, meaning it was for users seventeen and up (Jones 189).

The ESRB is frequently updated and enforced everywhere in the country. However, children still gain access to these games in assortment of ways. Several lawsuits have been filed against game retailers for selling games to under aged children. Game retailers are now forced to check I.D. by law before selling these games no matter how old the customer looks. However, some children gain access to these games through adults, whether the adult is negligent  or uninformed varies from case to case. Some adults are simply uninformed about how the rating system works before purchasing a video game. Others don't believe that the game should be kept out of the hands of children.

Just as there are people who believe that video games increase violence in children there are people who believe the opposite. There are several reasons that people believe that video games don't increase violence in youth such as, a fall in youth violence, coincidence and a lack of statistical proof. carrying over to the real world. All of these reasons are acceptable and have evidence to support their claims.

Often when a person admits to committing a crime based on a video game it sis looked at as case closed. However there is often more to it than what is viewed on the surface. When the case is looked at more in depth, it can be seen that a large majority of these offenders have a previous psychosis, or mental disability. This can be seen in many high profile cases. One case in particular is the Columbine school shooting.

After the shooting took place, it was revealed that both assailants were fans of the gory first person shooter Doom. They created several levels designed based on the layout of their school. It was initially assumed that this game led tot he violent outburst that the boys were prone to. However, after further investigations it was learned that both boys suffered from multiple psychosis. While the boys played a game with no violent outburst initially that changed. The change was due to the fact that both boys stopped taking their medications. The violent outcries did not begin until their parents took away their video games as a response to the boys not taking their medications. Without their medications the boys suffered from thoughts that they did not have beforehand ("Covering Violence" Roger Simpson and William Cote pg 138).

People who suffer from psychosis sometimes have problem differentiating between reality and fantasy. One such psychosis is schizophrenia. Some schizophrenics suffer from illusions that include all of their senses. These illusions and hallucinations can sometimes cause the real world to meld into one world with a fictional world. These hallucinations can be realist, however they can also be highly unrealistic. People who suffer from psychosis can also be subject to uncontrollable fits of rage and sudden mood swings. These mood swings can place a person in a fragile mind state that can easily be fractured and put a person into uncontrollable fits of rage or even cause suicidal tendencies.

Another reason that people don't often look at this is the rate of youth violence. If video games were truly increasing the aggression in youth, wouldn't there be an increase in the rate of youth violence? However, when the rate of youth violence is examined it is at the lowest point since 1987. This statistic is often over looked. However, it is the only statistic that is present that carried over from the research lab to the physical world. Now the question we face is; why is this related to video games?

One reason that is often accepted is that video games provide a nonviolent outlet for aggression in youth. One reason that psychologist Lawrence Kutner and sociologist Cheryl Olson make in Grand Theft Childhood is that politicians can use it to revive their careers. "If you listen the politicians and pundits, the relationship is blindingly clear: violent video games leads people to engage in real world violence," ("Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Video Games" Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson). An example of this is senator Joe Lieberman during the 1990's. During this time he held conferences to discuss the harmful effects of video games on children. Kutner and Olson hypothesize that these hearings helped move Sen. Lieberman into the role of the Senate Committee of Governmental Affairs ("Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Video Games" Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson pg 6). Another example is Jack Thompson. Jack was a prosecutor in the Yates v. Midway civil lawsuit. Afterwards Thompson continued his crusade against game developers and publishers of video games. He began to run for senate after gaining publicity for several years. However he was permanently disbarred in 2008 for making false statements under oath and belittling litigants, this caused Jack to put his Senate aspirations on hold. Video games are simply an easy scapegoat for politicians to create and forward their careers. One modern example is Joe Biden considering a tax on violent video games.

With people who say video games increase violence have a strong case the people who disagree have a strong case as well, but the truth is neither can be proven correct as of yet. There are many reasons this is true. The two most significant  of the studies are not of high enough quality and the results are inconclusive. While there are people with a spotlight that view the subject as black and white, the experts have stated that it will take several more years to decide who is correct.

One person who has been outspoken is psychologist Guy Cumberbatch. Cumberbatch has almost thirty years of experience in psychological studies. His focus on the relationship between the media, media and aggression in children. Cumberbatch states:

"The real puzzle is that anyone looking at the research evidence in this field can draw any conclusions about the pattern, let alone argue with such confidence and even passion that it demonstrates the harm of violence on television, in films and in video games. While tests of statistical significance are a vital tool of the social sciences they seem to have been more often used in this field as instruments of torture on the data until it confesses something which could justify publication in a scientific journal," ("Torturing the Data. Grand Theft Childhood" Guy Cumberbatch pg 17).

Cumberbatch is stating that the data is being manipulated to forward agendas on both sides of this debate. This would explain the amount of published journal articles being so few, yet the opinions being so many, all while citing the same studies.

Kutner and Olson also relate this to another debate, the debate about comic books as well as rock and roll. When comic books first appeared they were thought to increase violence in children as well. However, ti was later proved that some people of an older generation simply did not like change. They state this could be a similar example as 63 percent of people between the ages of twelve and twenty one play video games at least weekly. Sometimes an age group can be considered reckless, aggressive, rebellious and a slew of  other discouraging words. It is easy to associate pastimes of a generation with it's actions. In their book Kutner and Olson attempt to discourage parents from following this trend, (Kutner and Olson 213)

The people who often do these studies are not experts in the fields. While a person may be a psychologist or sociologist, they may never have focused on either violent media or youth. Often these people may be looking for their first chance to be published in a scientific journal by "riding the hype train." This leads to a poor quality of studies. The studies may be completed in less time than necessary to study the results. There is also the fact there is very little to compare the results against. The amount of aggression that violent video games cause can only be compared to overall aggression. However, it can't be compared to aggression caused by violent movies, music or even books. That is because most of the studies on those topics have become very outdated (Kutner and Olson 267).

The Supreme Court also believes that more research is necessary. Eight different states have attempted to pass laws that would ban the sale of video games to anyone under the age of eighteen. They all reference the "sliding scale" of pornography as an inspiration. Pornography has long been legal for adults but not for minors due to it's sexual content. The sliding scale allows adults to possess it but not children because it is deemed to be destructive to a child's mental development. The Supreme Court views video games as protected by the first and fourteenth amendments. They also don't believe that the evidence presented is enough to prove that video games affect mental growth in a negative way.

Nancy Yates is still dead, but his death cannot be blamed fully on a video game. Nancy and Noah should not have been playing a game that was so so violent. However, his parents should have researched the game before buying it. It is the responsibility of the government to keep these games out of the hands of children. They have all they can do and it is now up to the parents to help. This debate is a double-edged sword. Both sides have valid arguments, and both sides are reasonable. However, it can't be decided weather video games increase aggression or not based on the current information. More research of a higher quality is has to be done before a true winner of this debate can be chosen. In a world where video games a becoming more graphically realistic and violently unrealistic, this debate will only have more importance.

You can hear Darrell on the CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts. He's also playing Pokemon Liquid Crystal on YouTube
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