Don't Blame The Games, Blame The Parent

jayintune writes "2old2play has an interesting article up on the recent push for more laws on videogame sales to children. It goes over the history of violent crime amongst teens and how it relates to the new surge in videogame-related legislation. Do laws really help our children or is it ultimately the parents role to decided?" From the article: "I'd say by the time a kid is three or four, he or she should know it's not okay to hit someone else. The child should be aware violence is not an acceptable response. Parents, grandparents, older siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, teachers... anyone older than a child should reinforce certain societal values and traits. Kids should and mostly do know better. I talked with a psychologist who told me children can separate reality from fiction at about nine or ten years of age. Well, "pre-teen" is what he said. At that age, they know what's on TV isn't real, what's in a video game isn't real. Video games are easier; they're basically just moving cartoons."

Comments

Re:sports=violence?

[alfs boner]

Just as an interesting aside that your comment reminded me of, I was watching Real TV, or at least a similar show, basically video clips of crazy stuff happening. Anyways, there's one of a teenage ice hockey game going on where a fight breaks out. Big brawl, involving a number of players from both sides. One kid out there thinks that the fighting is stupid and a waste of time, so to protest and stop the fight, he takes his shirt off, and drops his pants, while skating around the rink.

That probably wouldn't have been my first idea had I been in his case, but people started cheering for him, and everyone stopped fighting to see what was going on. So his plan worked. What made it more interesting, however, was that someone in the stands didn't approve, and called the cops. And the cops arrested him for indecent exposure, and took him to jail.

I'm not anti-sport, or even anti-violent sports like hockey and football, but I think that it's amazing that in the midst of all that fighting, the guy that goes to jail is the pacifist who felt like taking his clothes off. It wasn't really lewd or sexual(unlike the infamous superbowl incident). He caused a fight to stop. He stopped people from trying to hurt each other. And someone found that offensive enough to call the cops. That just, to me, says something very strange about our culture.

Solution: Vote

[Mr. Sketch]

Seriously, if we have law makers passing this kind of legislation, it is our responsibility to vote them out of office. The article speaks of a generational gap between us (the under 35/40 crowd) and the older crowd. Not surprisingly, it's the older crowd that has the most active voting population, and they vote people in that have their views, which are usually anti-video games. They also have a well organized group (AARP) that feeds them the propaganda that they want to hear so they will write their congressperson and let them know they think violent video games are bad.

If we want to change this situation, we, as a generation, need to take action and vote out the people who are making these laws. This problem can only be addressed by doing something. We need to vote on election days and write on congressperson every time this issue comes up to let our voice be heard.