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The Social Impact of Gaming
"The Bart, The" writes "The Economist weekly is carrying a well considered special report on the current debate regarding morality and gaming." From the article: "Like rock and roll in the 1950s, games have been accepted by the young and largely rejected by the old. Once the young are old, and the old are dead, games will be regarded as just another medium and the debate will have moved on. Critics of gaming do not just have the facts against them; they have history against them, too."
Heh! The media has finally given me a name: "Digital Native". I kind of like it. Lot better than "Baby Boomer" or "Gen X'er", especially since I was kind of between the two.
John
The correlation that the "think of the children" groups talk about is that...it just runs the opposite way.
...games don't have that same rebelious feeling about them that rock music has. You can devote your life to rock and roll and there is a glamour to it. The same cannot be said for video games.
John Carmack will never, ever be regaurded the same way that John Lennon is.
Games, while becoming more acceptable socially, are never going to be regaurded as "cool" like rock.
You don't have to dislike games in order to be a critic of their impact on society :P. .. Kids to tend to stay in a lot more than they used to, and I blame it on TV and Games ... on visual media that requires their complete attention - unlike music, which you can listen to and do something else at the same time (though some may disagree)... :)
And I'm quite sure I'll be shouting at my kids with regards to playing too many computer games or the type of games that they pick to play. I personally blame it on the consumer. No one's forcing people to buy such games. What they do hush hush... well we used to watch porn in middle school - all hush hush so our parents wouldn't find out. All the same with mature rated games.
_Vishal www.squad9.com
Prior to that, it was jazz music, extra-marital sex, alcohol, and so on.
Now it's rap, games, and homosexuality. It's the same story over and over and over again. Trust me, your kids and grandkids aren't likely to see what the big deal is.
That's not to say there's a unidirectional element here. Things can happen to turn a society more conservative (usually some calamity). The depression, Second World War, and Cold Wor accomplished an interesting trifecta of pushing back on the more liberal attitudes that had started to emerge about sex, women, alcohol/drugs, and culture in the 20s in North America. 9/11 effectively brought religion back into the field, reversing a rather secular trend.
In the early 70s you had women wearing jeans studying engineering in Afghanistan. The country became ravaged by war and poverty, and...well...you know how that turned out.
I'm using very recent examples here, you can study this stuff WAY back.
I think the overal direction is that when society feels threatened, less will be tolerated, and there will be more conservative pressures. When the society thrives and is prosperous, though, it becomes more liberal.
Your second question; will society accept things that are not beneficial because youth do? Part of that depends on what you consider "not beneficial" (ie. harmful). If you still hold that rock is harmful, then the answer is yes.
If you have (sorry to say it) less of an agenda to push, then the answer is no, not really. Drugs never became culturally acceptable just because the youth accepted them. Drugs can be harmful, and so were rejected. Some drugs that were not so obviously detrimental (ie. marijuana) are still the subject of debate.
You'd never know it to look at them, but people can be remarkably sane, given enough opportunity.
The opinion above is fiction. Any similarity to real opinions, including facts and logic, is purely coincidental.