Natty Chatter

As with every generation, the media of the era can vastly affect the behaviors of children and its always amusing to see who gets the blame. For example, prior to 1989 when Tobacco companies voluntarily agreed to halt their product placement, the usage of tobacco products was very commonplace.

In a sense, a character smoking on screen was depicted as cool or glamorous which at the time convinced entire generations to light up. However, today its been ingrained to us how bad smoking is. For a quick glance, a simple search on Youtube brings up numerous ads against smoking and the end result of a life spent smoking.

However, in our era, the focus has now been shifted to violent video games and their effects on youngsters. Hits like Grand Theft Auto 4, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Gears of War, Metal Gear Solid 4, and SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals stand accused of inflicting great psychological harm on children.

As Dr. Phil puts it, "If you shoot somebody in one of these games, you don't go to jail, you don't get penalized in some way — you get extra points!". But the problem here is not that children are being rewarded for shooting people. Instead the problem is how these children have access to these games. In each case of the aforementioned games, the ESRB rates all those games as M for Mature, as in to be enjoyed by folks who are 17+ or older. As in adults who probably can tell the difference between fantasy and reality.

So the real question is where are the parents? Is it not the parents who purchase these games (as retailers are supposed to only sell said games to adults and not kids)? Where is the parental oversight for these children?

Thus instead of focusing on the real problem (bad parenting), we have our media whipped up in a firestorm to go after the makers of these games. Whether its in the form of protests or lawsuits, it just seems so misguided and wasted. A more effective approach would be to find all those bad parents and punish them by having their children take their violent tendencies on them. Seriously, when are parents going to do their due diligence before buying whatever it is their child nags them about.

What happened to parents instilling their children with the differences of right and wrong and what is real as opposed to what is fantasy? That is to say, the TV or the internet is not a valid replacement for parenting.

Allowing such bad parenting to continue will lead to more problems than violent video games could ever cause.

-C