Video Games May Desensitize Youth, but Nothing More

Parents have a reason to be afraid. In this age, youngsters can casually hop online and quickly find an easy recipe on how to make their favorite deadly explosive, many schools now have metal detectors at the doors to prevent armed students from massacring their peers, drugs flow freely down suburban streets, and children have unprecedented access to. . . . .video games?

It may seem a bit odd to place video games in the same category as the other frightening facts parents have to deal with, but in the past few years, violent acts of crime have become more and more common among teenagers. Parents looking to find a reason for this have turned to violent video games, which have also had a large growth over the past few years. Since almost every parent will have kids at some point who play video games, one of the most important topics facing them should be the deceptively simple question: Do violent video games cause violence in youth?

Games like SiN put you behind the gun of a futuristic law enforcer who's job is to shoot anyone with a gun, but there are no consequences for shooting innocents. Your enemies scream "Aaaargh! My eye, My eye!" while your character chuckles and retorts "Who's your daddy?" The game Duke Nukem 3D features a steroid pumped, foul mouthed, alien fighter whom you gladly take the role of. His hobbies are big guns, stopping to chat with the go-go dancers, and even bigger guns. Games such as these are the experiences that many teenagers come home to every day after school. After taking a quick look at games like this, common sense would tell you that games obviously cause violence in teens. However, the argument is too complex to justify the simple `yes' answer that common sense assigns the qu...

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...ve suggested. Not only will that cause a major national debate relating to first amendment rights, but it also just doesn't make sense to do that when so little is known on the subject at this point. "We can't make social policy based on the statistical aberrations of a handful of abnormal kids," says Henry Jenkins, author of From Barbie to Mortal Kombat.

I am willing to believe that violence in video games causes desensitization in teens, but I disagree with the idea that it causes violence in youth. Desensitization has a very bad connotation, when the truth is that it does not automatically lead to violent acts. The children who play violent video games and have committed horrendous crimes were a mere coincidence. They had a violent nature because they were mentally and psychologically deficient, not because they shot a few aliens in an electronic game.