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After April 20, though, I began to have some doubts--as I'm sure most parents did. Should we worry about our kids' exposure to video games? The question isn't whether games make children kill, because it isn't that simple. The concerns are subtler yet no less worrisome. Do graphically violent games desensitize children to violence? Do such games teach kids to take pleasure in the suffering and death of others? Are even nonviolent e-games addictive? Do they gobble up time better spent on homework, sports and other outdoor play? Or is most gaming time taken away from time in front of the TV, which, because kids sit passively before it, may be worse for them? What, if anything, should we do as a society? Should we ban the sale of violent video games to minors?
Almost every parent I know is asking these questions--and reaching very different conclusions. It seems to me that the two poles of the debate are held down by Doug Lowenstein, president of the Interactive Digital Software Association, and David Grossman, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and former professor of psychology at West Point.
Now an adjunct faculty member at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro (yes, that Jonesboro) and a student of all sorts of killing, Grossman has become the point man in the war against violent video games. His main assertion is that violent video games such as Doom or Quake help break down the natural inhibitions we have against killing. In fact, the military has begun using Doom-like games to improve so-called fire rates--encouraging soldiers to pull the trigger in battle. Only about one-fifth of U.S. soldiers in combat in World War II fired their weapons, a rate that the military pushed up to 95% by the Vietnam War, in part through the use of simulations meant to make shooting at humans seem more routine and "normal."
Violent video games, Grossman argues, prepare kids to kill and even teach them to enjoy the experience. Of course, "not everybody who plays these games will become a murderer," Grossman says. "Just as not everybody who smokes gets cancer. But they will all get sickened."
Grossman would like to see federal legislation that treats violent video games like guns, tobacco and alcohol--banning their sale to anyone under 18. Politicians in Washington, Arkansas and New York say they're thinking of proposing such laws.
Lowenstein, not surprisingly, believes the video-gaming industry has become a convenient scapegoat for society's ills. "The difference between cigarettes and video games is that video games are constitutionally protected under the First Amendment," he claims. Indeed, video games represent a type of artistic expression, like movies. Yet even movies have rating systems. When I was a child, it was pretty hard to sneak into an R-rated movie. But any kid can buy any video game, regardless of the rating it has been given by the industry. Lowenstein says that's the retailers' problem--and the parents'. "The purpose of the rating system is to empower the parents to make an informed choice. If a parent wants to give Junior $50 and say, 'Buy whatever you want. I don't care,' that's not my responsibility."