1. The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth
violence.
According to federal crime statistics, the rate of juvenile violent crime in
the United States is at a 30-year low. Researchers find that people serving
time for violent crimes typically consume less media before committing their
crimes than the average person in the general population. It's true that
young offenders who have committed school shootings in America have also
been game players. But young people in general are more likely to be gamers
— 90 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls play. The overwhelming majority
of kids who play do NOT commit antisocial acts. According to a 2001 U.S.
Surgeon General's report, the strongest risk factors for school shootings
centered on mental stability and the quality of home life, not media
exposure. The moral panic over violent video games is doubly harmful. It has
led adult authorities to be more suspicious and hostile to many kids who
already feel cut off from the system. It also misdirects energy away from
eliminating the actual causes of youth violence and allows problems to
continue to fester.
2. Scientific evidence links violent game play with youth aggression.
Claims like this are based on the work of researchers who represent one
relatively narrow school of research, "media effects." This research
includes some 300 studies of media violence. But most of those studies are
inconclusive and many have been criticized on methodological grounds. In
these studies, media images are removed from any narrative context. Subjects
are asked to engage with content that they would not normally consume and
may not understand. Finally, the laboratory context is radically different
from the environments where games would normally be played. Most studies
found a correlation, not a causal relationship, which means the research
could simply show that aggressive people like aggressive entertainment.
That's why the vague term "links" is used here. If there is a consensus
emerging around this research, it is that violent video games may be one
risk factor - when coupled with other more immediate, real-world influences
— which can contribute to anti-social behavior. But no research has found
that video games are a primary factor or that violent video game play could
turn an otherwise normal person into a killer.
3. Children
are the primary market for video games.
While most American kids do play video games, the center of the video game
market has shifted older as the first generation of gamers continues to play
into adulthood. Already 62 percent of the console market and 66 percent of
the PC market is age 18 or older. The game industry caters to adult tastes.
Meanwhile, a sizable number of parents ignore game ratings because they
assume that games are for kids. One quarter of children ages 11 to 16
identify an M-Rated (Mature Content) game as among their favorites. Clearly,
more should be done to restrict advertising and marketing that targets young
consumers with mature content, and to educate parents about the media
choices they are facing. But parents need to share some of the
responsibility for making decisions about what is appropriate for their
children. The news on this front is not all bad. The Federal Trade
Commission has found that 83 percent of game purchases for underage
consumers are made by parents or by parents and children together.
4. Almost no girls play computer games.
Historically, the video game market has been predominantly male. However,
the percentage of women playing games has steadily increased over the past
decade. Women now slightly outnumber men playing Web-based games. Spurred by
the belief that games were an important gateway into other kinds of digital
literacy, efforts were made in the mid-90s to build games that appealed to
girls. More recent games such as The Sims were huge crossover successes that
attracted many women who had never played games before. Given the historic
imbalance in the game market (and among people working inside the game
industry), the presence of sexist stereotyping in games is hardly
surprising. Yet it's also important to note that female game characters are
often portrayed as powerful and independent. In his book Killing Monsters,
Gerard Jones argues that young girls often build upon these representations
of strong women warriors as a means of building up their self confidence in
confronting challenges in their everyday lives.
5.
Because games are used to train soldiers to
kill, they have the same impact on the kids who play them.
Former military psychologist and moral reformer David Grossman argues that
because the military uses games in training (including, he claims, training
soldiers to shoot and kill), the generation of young people who play such
games are similarly being brutalized and conditioned to be aggressive in
their everyday social interactions.
Grossman's model only works if:
we remove training and education from a meaningful cultural context.
we assume learners have no conscious goals and that they show no resistance
to what they are being taught.
we assume that they unwittingly apply what they learn in a fantasy
environment to real world spaces.
The military uses games as part of a specific curriculum, with clearly
defined goals, in a context where students actively want to learn and have a
need for the information being transmitted. There are consequences for not
mastering those skills. That being said, a growing body of research does
suggest that games can enhance learning. In his recent book, What Video
Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, James Gee describes game
players as active problem solvers who do not see mistakes as errors, but as
opportunities for improvement. Players search for newer, better solutions to
problems and challenges, he says. And they are encouraged to constantly form
and test hypotheses. This research points to a fundamentally different model
of how and what players learn from games.
6.
Video games are not a meaningful form of expression.
On April 19, 2002, U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Sr. ruled that
video games do not convey ideas and thus enjoy no constitutional protection.
As evidence, Saint Louis County presented the judge with videotaped excerpts
from four games, all within a narrow range of genres, and all the subject of
previous controversy. Overturning a similar decision in Indianapolis,
Federal Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner noted: "Violence has always
been and remains a central interest of humankind and a recurrent, even
obsessive theme of culture both high and low. It engages the interest of
children from an early age, as anyone familiar with the classic fairy tales
collected by Grimm, Andersen, and Perrault are aware." Posner adds, "To
shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent
descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would
leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it." Many early
games were little more than shooting galleries where players were encouraged
to blast everything that moved. Many current games are designed to be
ethical testing grounds. They allow players to navigate an expansive and
open-ended world, make their own choices and witness their consequences. The
Sims designer Will Wright argues that games are perhaps the only medium that
allows us to experience guilt over the actions of fictional characters. In a
movie, one can always pull back and condemn the character or the artist when
they cross certain social boundaries. But in playing a game, we choose what
happens to the characters. In the right circumstances, we can be encouraged
to examine our own values by seeing how we behave within virtual space.
7. Video game play is socially isolating.
Much video game play is social. Almost 60 percent of frequent gamers play
with friends. Thirty-three percent play with siblings and 25 percent play
with spouses or parents. Even games designed for single players are often
played socially, with one person giving advice to another holding a
joystick. A growing number of games are designed for multiple players — for
either cooperative play in the same space or online play with distributed
players. Sociologist Talmadge Wright has logged many hours observing online
communities interact with and react to violent video games, concluding that
meta-gaming (conversation about game content) provides a context for
thinking about rules and rule-breaking. In this way there are really two
games taking place simultaneously: one, the explicit conflict and combat on
the screen; the other, the implicit cooperation and comradeship between the
players. Two players may be fighting to death on screen and growing closer
as friends off screen. Social expectations are reaffirmed through the social
contract governing play, even as they are symbolically cast aside within the
transgressive fantasies represented onscreen.
8.
Video game play is desensitizing.
Classic studies of play behavior among primates suggest that apes make basic
distinctions between play fighting and actual combat. In some circumstances,
they seem to take pleasure wrestling and tousling with each other. In
others, they might rip each other apart in mortal combat. Game designer and
play theorist Eric Zimmerman describes the ways we understand play as
distinctive from reality as entering the "magic circle." The same action —
say, sweeping a floor — may take on different meanings in play (as in
playing house) than in reality (housework). Play allows kids to express
feelings and impulses that have to be carefully held in check in their
real-world interactions. Media reformers argue that playing violent video
games can cause a lack of empathy for real-world victims. Yet, a child who
responds to a video game the same way he or she responds to a real-world
tragedy could be showing symptoms of being severely emotionally disturbed.
Here's where the media effects research, which often uses punching rubber
dolls as a marker of real-world aggression, becomes problematic. The kid who
is punching a toy designed for this purpose is still within the "magic
circle" of play and understands her actions on those terms. Such research
shows us only that violent play leads to more violent play.
German
nutters and politicians have just held a conference on violent computer games:
New
research from Sweden indicates that violent video games affect boys'
heart rate and sleep, according to Science Daily.
Children
and teenagers who play violent video games show increased
physical aggression months afterward, according to new research.
People
who spend too much time playing video games, especially violent video
games, may risk damaging brain functions and affect their learning and
emotional control, according to findings of a study.
Abstract
Playing violent video games makes children lose their self-control.