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

Two words.

[kunwon1]

'No shit!'

Where is the disconnect?

[MonkeyPaw]

When I was a kid the hype was all about violence in cartoons.. I watched them but I never dropped an anvil or piano on someone (not to say I didn't want rocket-powered roller skates).

I think people give far less credit to kids and their concepts of reality vs make believe.

It's a shame

[aitikin]

I've been hearing this from people in the social and psychological fields since shortly after Columbine. The shame is that Jack Thompson and his band of conservaative game haters never heard it or never listened to it. Studies have been done for years that prove this, very few that prove the contrary, and yet only the ones that prove the contrary seem to make the news outside of slashdot and gaming boards.

This may sound cliché but,

[madsenj37]

Hitler did not have video games. Neither did Ghengis Khan or Alexander the Great. It is up to the parents to raise their children properly. Kids are a product of their whole environment, not just video games.

Blame, blame, blame

[Anonymous Coward]

Blame the game or blame the parent? WTF. It's all of the above and more. Does anyone honestly it's as simplistic as "it's the games fault that Johnny went postal" or "it's his parents fault that Johnny went postal"? Actually I guess there are people that do.

Listen up folks, regardless of which camp you fall into, you're both wrong. When someone performs such acts it's almost always a complex interaction between many factors. The child themself, their parents, their friends, their environment, all those things factor into how one acts/reacts. There is no such thing as "perfect" parenting. You could apply the exact same parenting style to two different kids and get to very differently behaved kids. Ditto the other factors. What happens is that all these factors play together and if you get the right (or wrong depending on your perspective) then something bad can happen. Blindly trying to blame a single point of failure, while comforting to many, almost never works.

That is what is so upsetting about both extremes of this debate. On the one side you have folks who want to ban violent video games. On the other (and many on /. fall into this category) are those who claim that the media (including video games) have NOTHING to do with it and responsibility falls on the parents. Both are right and both are wrong.

of course...

[alfs boner]

Back in the "old days" it was the Waltz, then there was the Tango, the Charleston and then...

1950s OH MY GOD THE WORLD IS OVER, Rock and Roll... our children are being corrupted

1960s OH MY GOD, ELVIS is such a good boy, but those BEATLES

1970s TV is KILLING my Children

1980s HORROR MOVIES are KILLING my Children

1990s NIVARNA are forcing Children to top themselves

And of course now its Video Games which are forcing Children into a life of violence.

This is just another great "Aunt Sally" for politicians and "academics" to debate and get money from. If it wasn't this they'd be battering on at Cartoons for glorifying violence (there is nothing in Doom III worse than the violence of Tom and Jerry or Roadrunner). The young are ALWAYS being corrupted in the minds of the elders, and what corrupted them in their youth is now seen as innocent.

And have you noticed... its always the over 40s who start wars... something must be making them do it.... I blame mugs of hot chocolate.

And lets not forget when Marge banned "Itchy and Scratchy"

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.

Rephrase

[Lord Bitman]

By the time a child is three or four, they should have had beaten into them the idea that hitting someone is not okay.