Video Game Violence and Restrictive

Video Game Violence and Restrictive Regulation for Minors

During the early development of modern electronic entertainment media, there was comparatively less concern for the effect of exposing children to violent imagery. Until the last two decades of the 20th century, children's cartoons were shockingly violent by today's standards; age restrictions for theatrical motion pictures based on their violent content date back only slightly earlier than that. Depictions of violence and mayhem in modern computer games and video games are much more graphic than any mainstream motion picture, and certain anecdotal evidence may suggest that exposure to violence in gaming entertainment during childhood and adolescence contributes to actual instances of violence and criminal deviance. That is the principal basis for the argument supporting age restrictions to reduce the exposure of minors to video violence.

Other evidence may conflict with that analysis and conclusion. Opponents of age restrictions on computer and video entertainment based on violent content cite the extreme rarity of documented cases where such exposure was actually determined to be among the causal factors of real violence. That view opposes any conclusion that the media at issue should be restricted to the vast majority of consumers who do not actually become violent. This is your thesis:

It may be that the anecdotal connections observed between video violence and real violence are more coincidental than causally related. A comparison of the respective arguments may strongly suggest that video content should be restricted by age but only in the same manner and for the same purpose as similar restrictions on other modes of modern media.

The Justification for Age Restrictions on Violent Gaming Imagery

Several high-profile incidents of violence among adolescents such as in connection with high-school shootings and other violent assaults raised specific concerns about the potential danger of unrestricted exposure to violent video game imagery. Several previous studies have found higher rates of fighting and dangerous play among children regularly exposed to violent video imagery (Sherman, 2002). That perception may have gathered significant momentum more than a decade ago after initial reports that the two perpetrators of the infamous shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado had spent considerable amounts of time on violent video games (Olson, 2004; Sherman, 2002).

In the late 20th century, the entertainment media began applying stricter controls to reduce violent imagery based on the belief that children exposed to violent video games absorbed unintended inferences about human interactions and behavior that increased any tendency to carry over those images into their play. In theory, children and many adolescents alike lack the necessary emotional and intellectual development to draw appropriate distinctions between fantasy in play and the real world on human behavior (AAP, 2001).

Analysis

There may be very little (if any) logical significance to the anecdotal evidence that specific adolescent perpetrators of violence and mayhem may have played violent video games (Olson, 2004). It may simply be that a very high percentage of contemporary adolescents have been regular consumers of violent entertainment media (including gaming). In that case, the only connection between violent entertainment imagery and actual violence would be coincidental. In principle, imposing age restrictions on violent video games would hardly be more justified than imposing the same restrictions on skateboards since a statistically significant number of violent adolescents also owned skateboards. That is precisely the reason that pornography is not restricted (with respect to adults) generally just because certain individuals determined to have perpetrated violent sexual abuse also consumed pornography. It would seem that on the basis of the causation rationale that age restrictions on violent video game content is no more logically justified than other types of overly broad restrictions (Olson, 2004).

In the 1950s, several instances occurred where young children watching the original Superman television series fell to their deaths after trying to emulate the star character's leaping takeoff from high-rise building windows. The series was not cancelled or changed to an adult time slot; instead, public service announcements were produced using George Reeves, in character and costume as Superman, expressly warn children not to try to emulate their hero. That approach solved the problem of inappropriate and dangerous behavioral emulation among children too young to distinguish entertainment from reality.

Much more recently, movie theaters began restricting entrance to movies with violent content or expressly sexual themes and imagery based on age; however, those restrictions are flexible enough to accommodate parental decisions. Specifically, restrictions of movies rated "R" admit adolescents with parental supervision. Similar restrictions are not necessarily inappropriate with respect to violent video games, although not necessarily because they are capable of influencing behavior or of increasing the chances that individuals exposed to them will perpetrate violence in real life.

The argument that graphic imagery in video and computer games should be restricted subject to parental approval for other reasons is much stronger than the argument for similar restrictions based on their supposed ability to increase the propensity of young consumers toward actual violence (Olson, 2004). Specifically, responsible parents typically exercise their personal authority over what types of recreational activities to allow their children, as well as over what magazines they may read, what television programs they are allowed to watch, and over their curfew in the home; they also teach their children not to run into the street. Irresponsible parents may exercise no such control, misuse television as a babysitter, and allow their children to play in the street at their peril.