Recently a 17 year old boy shot his parents in revenge after they took away his Halo 3 video game.
I grimace in anticipation of all the media outlets once again blaming video games for crime. This has happened every time a video game is connected to any crime in one form or another. I strongly believe that video games are no more influencing than movies, music, books, magasines, billboards, internet posts, or any other sort of media that exists and that when blame is placed on any of these forms of media you are basically excusing inappropriate and violent behaviour by accrediting to an inanimate object. Remember the old slogan – Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Well, I would argue that video games are even less likely to kill people.
This was the same treatment rock and roll received in the 50s, or television, or anything else that has entered public consciousness for as long as human societies have existed. The simple fact is that we live in a world where video game entertainment is a multi-billion dollar industry and some sort of gaming entertainment is found in if not most, than many homes. Every average kid in the US and Canada have played video games at some point in their lives. What twenty year old these days has never seen a Nintendo system? Sooner or later some of them will commit crimes – even incredibly violent ones – but is it fair to blame video games for them? I would argue no – it would be like blaming a Western movie because a man robbed a bank. Our society doesn’t seem to take responsibility and accept that some of its members are simply flawed people.
I agree that video games can be influencing, but I do not feel that it can be used to entirely explain poor behaviour. I think in many cases most of these violent situations are caused by a violent person to begin with who was not properly monitored or disciplined (or simply did not respond to monitoring or discipline). In this particular case the parents were being very active in controlling their child’s access to video games. Parents should be doing this – just as they should be cutting their kids off from television and movies when necessary on an individual basis – and understand and actively participate in the media children are involved with. In this case the kid reacted negatively – I of course have no information beyond this article, but I would suspect this kid was somewhat violent to begin with. But that’s just a personal opinion. I refrain from judging the individual without more information.
Regardless, my point is not about this article, but about the finger pointing at video games in these situations. I implore all of you: spend some time with your kids and stop letting television and video games raise them alone… these things are not dangerous, they can in fact be very positive, but they require supervision. A lot of problems, I feel, could be avoided if more people would take time out of their lives to monitor their wards.
Related posts:
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
[...] Your privacy remains under siege, but no one seems to worry about the implications of airing their private life on the Internet. The prevailing view is that nothing is your fault anyway – in a particularly gross turn of events, an Ohio teen claimed he shot his parents because they took away his video game. [...]