Video game violence and age restrictions for minors

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).

Conclusion

In all likelihood, exposure to violent, criminal, or sexual imagery should be restricted from minors (subject to parental approval) for many of the same reasons that exposure to similar images in film and on television are either restricted outright or capable of being restricted electronically by parents. On the other hand, there does not appear to be a logically valid justification for restricting video and computer games based on violent content out of the specific concern that regular exposure to graphically violent imagery in video-game format increases violent behavior among children and adolescents. If anything, the available literature strongly suggests that exposure to violent video games does not actually contribute to real violence; rather, the anecdotal connection are merely coincidental. Ultimately, violent video-games should probably be restricted from unsupervised (or unauthorized) use by adolescents, but only for the same reasons as other forms of media that may be inappropriate for their consumption without parental approval. They should probably not be restricted based on the concern that they directly contribute to real violence.