Kids - Blame The Violence On Video Games?

"On December 1, 1997 a fourteen-year-old boy took his thoughts and feelings, the sum total of the influences in his life, and five guns into Heath High School [in Paducah, Kentucky]. After watching students pray, he opened fire on them. Kayce, Jessica, and Ni-cole died that day…. We believe the Heath High School shooter was influenced by the movies he watched, the video games he played, and the Internet sites he accessed. With his easy access to guns, his violent urges were allowed to take on a life outside his own troubled mind." — From testimony before Congress of Sabrina Steger, mother of victim Kayce Steger, seeking to ban the sale of violent video games to minors.

The graphic shows some statistics about video games. It's a $6.3 billion industry. Kids like to play video games — 90% of households with children have rented or owned one. Kids especially like violent video games — 80% of the games kids like best contain violent or aggressive content. We saw in an earlier panel that more kids are arrested nowadays for violent crimes than were arrested in 1970. Does playing violent video games make them more likely to commit an act of violence? Fifty-six percent of people polled thought so, and there are plenty of credible experts who agree.

Kansas State University's Professor John Murray has studied the effects of media violence for more than 30 years. He told Paul Keegan of Mother Jones magazine that while there is no direct proof of a cause and effect relationship and there may never be such proof, "At some point, you have to say that if exposure to violence is related to aggressive attitudes and values, and if [the latter] are related to shooting classmates or acting aggressively — all of which we know to be true — then it stands to reason that there is probably a link between exposure to violence and aggressive actions."

Keegan offered more statistics: "DUKE NUKEM is one of the bad-boy 'first-person shooter' games that have brought such disrepute to the industry. Though shooters represent less than seven percent of overall sales, a recent TIME/CNN poll showed that 50 percent of teenagers between 13 and 17 who have played video games have played them. Ten percent say they play regularly. A breakthrough game will fly off the shelves: Bestselling shooters DOOM and QUAKE have had combined sales of 4.2 million."¹² Today's video games take the notion of "you are there" to new heights. Keegan compared the experience of playing them to an "acid trip" in the way they alter one's sense of perception.

Critics often mention the desensitization to violence that comes from overexposure to it. Harvard's Sissela Bok, ethicist/philosopher, asks in her book Mayhem: Violence as Public Entertainment: "Is it alarmist or merely sensible to ask what happens to the souls of children nurtured, as in no past society, on images of rape, torture, bombings and massacre that are channeled into their homes from infancy?"

The armed forces use video games to train soldiers to kill by making shooting at humans seem routine. According to Lt. Colonel David Grossman (On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society): "One of the most effective and widely used simulators developed by the United States Army in recent years, MACS (Multipurpose Arcade Combat Simulator) is nothing more than a modified Super Nintendo game."

A 1998 FBI report provided a checklist for educators to use when assessing the potential for violence when a student has uttered threats. One of the many warning signs was a "fascination with violence-filled entertainment." The report offers the reassurance that "a great many adolescents who will never commit violent acts will show some of the behaviors or personality traits included on the list." Indeed it is true that most young people do not commit violent acts. Speaking in defense of video games to Time magazine's Joshua Quittner is Henry Jenkins, director of comparative media studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: "We can't make social policy based on the statistical aberrations of a handful of abnormal kids … moderately violent video games might even be beneficial, helping girls learn how to compete in an aggressive world."

Sources: Chart: "Video Game Violence," Mediascope Issue Briefs, http://www.mediascope.org; Arlene Moscovitch, "Electronic Media and the Family," http://www.vifamily.ca/cft/media/media.htm.; USA Weekend's Third Annual America's Poll, http://www.usaweekend.com/; "Media Violence: Its Effect on Children," www.marymount.k12.ny.us. Michele Steinberg, "Programmed to Kill: Video Games, Drugs, and the 'New Violence,'" 21st Century Science & Technology, Fall 2000. Testimony of Sabrina Steger, Presented to the Senate Commerce Committee, March 21, 2000, http://www.lionlamb.org/steger.htm. Paul Keegan, "Culture Quake," Mother Jones, Nov/Dec 1999. Joshua Quittner, "Are Video Games Really So Bad?," Time, May 10, 1999. National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC), "The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment Perspective," www.fbi.gov/publications/school/school2.pdf. "The Influence of Violent Entertainment Material on Kids: What is to be Done?" http://www.ftc.gov/speeches/pitofsky/naag99.htm. Information retrieved October 17, 2002.