Target parenting, not games for violence

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting in Newtown, Conn., and similar tragedies, the reaction from the national media and others has been a persistent interest to immediately identify a cause for acts of violence and to assign blame.

With fingers pointing in nearly every direction, video games are often, but wrongly, identified as a catalyst for violence.

The narrative that children and young adults today stare at television and computer screens, developing lethal skills through first-person gaming experiences, disingenuously portrays video games as having a corrosive influence. The problem with this rationale is that it conveys an image that America’s youth are incapable of discerning right from wrong, which simply is not true.

Also overlooked is the obligation of parents and caretakers to exercise proper oversight of their children. Video games are present in millions of homes nationwide. They are there for the purpose of entertainment, the same way different types of literature and music have entertained past generations and new forms will continue to grab the attention of future generations. Targeting video games as the problem is nothing more than a distraction from the broader challenges presented by improper parenting and far more obvious triggers of violence.

So the implication that video games are damaging is worthy more as a criticism of parents. Video games are meant to entertain and even teach in some cases. They are not intended to be replacements for good parenting. For those who view video games that way, they have some serious rethinking to do.

In 2011, the Supreme Court also weighed in, striking down a California law seeking to regulate the sale and rental of computer and video games. The court dismissed any direct link between video games and real-life violence, and Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, stated: “Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively.”

It was similarly noted in a brief for the case, filed by 82 expert social scientists, that the state “ignore[d] a weighty body of scholarship, undertaken with established and reliable scientific methodologies, debunking the claim that the video games California seeks to regulate have harmful effects on minors.”

Even if the science is denied, common sense need still apply. Murder and crime rates in the U.S. are lower now than before the introduction of modern gaming. Moreover, as the popularity of video games in the U.S. has skyrocketed over the past 15 years, the rate of violent crime among young people and the overall population has not followed suit.

In fact, an examination of the 10 largest video game markets around the globe found no correlation between video game consumption and gun-related killings. Meanwhile, countries where the same video games are popular have significantly lower firearm-related murder rates.

This all underscores an important point: Video games are not precursors to violence.

So let’s stop pretending that an entertainment medium is the cause of the problem. Let’s look for solutions in the real world, not the virtual one.