Danger danger!
Rant by Nic

<start/rant>

I really believe that the dangers of video games are being overplayed. I'm willing to admit that there is probably a danger of a person who watches ultra-violent movies and plays ultra-violent games all day every day of their life becoming desensitised or immune to the violence, but lets be real here - the vast majority of complaints about violent games and movies that I’ve seen revolve around a much lauded cure for all of the ills of society today: protecting the children from anything which could change or hurt them in any way.  

My question then is: who's supposed to be responsible for protecting the children? I'm not a parent yet, so maybe I don’t have the qualifications to be commenting, but I was a child not all that long ago, and I remember when Doom first came out, and I was still at home when the Columbine shootings happened.  

I played these supposedly ‘dangerous’ games. I've played Grand Theft Auto. I've played Manhunt. I think the difference is, I played them for short periods, and I played them on a computer which was in the living room of our house, and almost all of the time, it was under the supervision of my parents. There were no midnight marathons of GTA with the parents either oblivious or uncaring.  

I've read a number studies into the effects of media on children and adolescents, and I've yet to see one which can definitively prove a link between high consumption of violent games and increasingly violent behaviour.  Before you get up in arms and decide to send me angry emails, I've not yet seen one which can definitively disprove it either. Bear with me here - 

Nobody has proven or disproven any real danger inherent in playing violent video games. Having said that, as a person who does want to be a parent one of these days, I'm fairly sure I would feel uncomfortable having my youngster playing Doom 6, or GTA 9. I'd have no problem with them playing it when they hit 15-16, as long as they play it under my supervision, and it's not in all night marathons, but otherwise, they’ll be playing Civilisation 8, or The Sims 5, or whatever - something a little more suited for their age. But once he/she is in bed, I wouldn't mind cranking out the Dooms or GTAs of the generation and having a play myself. Under the censorship rules being touted as the only possible solution for this awful filth creating a generation of violent kids, I wouldn't be able to do that. For the supposed sake of my kid, who I’m pretty sure I will be able to watch over perfectly well, thank you, I would be restricted in my own enjoyments, and I don't like that idea. 

Perhaps that makes me an exception in today’s world - that I'm willing to commit my time to being actively involved in what my child will play and what my child will watch - just like my parents were all through my formative years. Maybe that’s why I'm very strongly against restrictions on the games that can be made and sold in Australia. There seems to be, in recent times, a strange distancing of parents from the responsibilities of parenthood, and in turn the placing of that responsibility on the Government - to 'make things safer for the children.' I disagree strongly with this – it should never be the role of Government to serve as watch keeper and surrogate guardian for our children – that’s what parents are supposed to do. 

It makes me angry to see parents complaining about things their children are watching or playing and then blaming it on the Government for allowing the kids to get hold of it. Again and again, I find myself asking one question – “What were you doing?” Where were the parents while little Johnny was looking at pornography on the computer they gave him and let him have in his bedroom? Get off your soapbox, and take some responsibility for enabling the very situation you’re complaining about now. 

Here, let me take this to extremes. If we're really that serious about making the children safe, why don't we start by getting rid of swings? I’ve seen kids fall off swings and break arms or legs before - so it's dangerous, let’s get rid of them! What about roundabouts? I've fallen off one and scraped skin off my arms and legs. Let’s get rid of them too! I know - I fell off my bike once, and did some serious damage to my arm and sides, so from now on, no more bikes for kids. 

Are you starting to see a pattern here? How bland, boring, and unstimulating will our children's life be if we take away any thing which has the slightest chance of hurting them? (And I don't just mean physically hurting them.) Children learn from their mistakes. When they fall of a bike, they dust themselves off, get back on, and try again. Why should the rest of life be any different? 

But there’s more extremes here - if we ban bikes for kids, we're going to have to ban them for the adults, too, otherwise they could fall off our bikes and hurt themselves. We can't allow that! What's next – the sharp corners on everything that kids could split their head open on? Get rid of them! I once dropped a nice glass and then had a shard of it slice open my feet – why don’t we get rid of glasses too, and have only plastic cups from now on? I know, kids die in car crashes, or by being hit by cars, don't they? Well, I can solve that! No more cars! 

I mean, hell, I know kids who got upset by a book or movie or TV show killing off an important character, because they'd been lucky enough to never have to deal with death before then or the parents hadn't really dealt with it well with them. You could go as far as saying that hurt them too, and needs to be banned... 

I'm trying to argue this ad absurdum for a reason - because pointing out the somewhat absurd extremes to which we could logically take their arguments, seems to be the only way of challenging the preconceptions and rather forcefully held opinions of others who constantly fall back on rhetoric and intensely emotional arguments rather than fact or logic. These are the people who want to restrict these arbitrarily 'dangerous' things for all of us, not just children, and it's only by challenging them that we will finally get rid of this drive for censorship, and then maybe, just maybe, we'll get some real focus back on the problem I see as the biggest one facing this generation of parents - getting interested, involved, and important in their kid's lives. Then maybe, parents will take back the responsibility that they undertook - like it or not - when they had children. 

< end/rant >

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