Thelnie Cracks

Parents’ fear of violent video games

I saw this on the yahoo mainpage and it caught my eye. Particularly because I’ve done research on this very subject. I found out recently that in order to graduate from a university, the title “university” means that you know how to do research. That’s why at UCI, we have to take an upper division writing course that makes you do a research paper. The class I took was People in Society, which is practically any social issue you can think of.

The thing that parents are fearing more for their kids, is the violence in the video games they play. No doubt being heightened by the sensationalize media takes on school shootings. In the bigs ones, like Columbine, and Virginia Tech, the shooters had a history of gaming, and being male, gaming has to do with killing something. They’re not rushing home to play Barbie fashion dress up, or Cooking Mama, or Hello Kitty Island Adventure.

The demographic research on this is, however, that video gaming and violent titles are played nation-wide, but school shootings are not. They are still more prevalent where gun culture is high and places were kids are pressured to blend in with everyone else.

Here is the link to download my paper if you want to read through it. It’s 15 pages in APA format. It’s not all just about school shootings, actually. The paper is about the effects of violent video games on adolescents…how submersed kids can be, how influenced they become…even good effects. Since it’s in APA format, and a research paper, there aren’t any opinions in it. APA format was pretty hard -__-”.

As for kids still being able to buy violent games, it’s like getting into an R rated movie. I forgot if I posted about this in my blog, but I was as EB games one day, and I overheard a grandma and her grandson at the counter.

Grandma: We want uh….a Grand Theft Auto 4? <looks at grandson to make sure she said it right.

Salesman: Oh yeah, lemme get that……okay, just to make sure, the ESRB rating states warnings for blood, intense violence, partial nudity, strong language, strong sexual content, use of alcohol, use of drugs. Is this okay?

Grandma: <looking back down on her grandson> Is this it?

Grandson: <nods up and down with bright eyes>

Grandma: <shrugs> okay, yes.

Yeah, that was pretty easy. Here I was, standing there, almost smirking at the kid’s situation because he surely was going to get a little lecture for wanting to play a game that boasted partial NUDITY and had the word “sex” in there somewhere. But the grandma didn’t even seem fazed by all of that. This was right after I had finished my second draft of my paper too, and I was a bit shocked.

Maybe the only way to solve this is to make sure people show proof that they are mentally stable to be able to play violent video games. In fact, we should all show proof we’re mentally stable all the time. Make it a patch and stick it on our heads.

There’s nothing to fear! I’m mentally stable!