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| Shinigami (profile) wrote, on 11-23-2004 at 12:47pm | |
Teenage violence has always been a problem in the United States, but only in the past six or seven years have video games been put on the spotlight for the cause of violence. Ever since the Littleton and Jonesboro shootings has violent video games been put under the microscope and really had parents and educators scrutinize and criticize what games children play. As violent “point-and-shoot” games become more realistic parents, educators, and even senators are putting up red flags to stop these games from getting in the hands of children, and rightly so. But the older video game population, people that are over the age of 18, are finding it hard to not be criticized themselves about the ‘violent’ games they play. Not all people are deeming video games bad though, and some are even using them as a tool for teaching. But what are some of the good and bad effects that video games have on children? On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went into Columbine High School armed with guns, knives and up to 99 bombs. They killed 12 of their fellow classmates and one of their teachers, and in the end killed themselves. There were a lot of different reasons that Klebold and Harris brought guns into their school and killed their classmates, but two years after the massacre relatives of the victims were seeking damages from computer game makers, claiming that their games helped to bring about the killings. There was a total of 25 companies’ named, including Sony America, Nintendo, AOL/Time Warner, Atari, Sega of America, and many more. The group asked for $5 billion in damages from the companies, alleging that their games created the conditions that made the massacre possible. The lawyer acting on behalf of the families, John DeCamp said the legal case they’re fighting for is to try and change the marketing and distribution of violent video and computer games that “turn children into ‘monster killers.’” After investigating into the Columbine shooting, one of the killers had a sawn off shotgun in his lap that he called ‘Arlene,’ supposedly named after a character in Doom a computer based, first person shooter game where you play as a lone space ranger shooting various aliens and creatures with a wide variety of weapons. Nothing yet has been solved, but the families dropped their case again Square Soft Inc. without explanation (BBC News). For years the military has used video games in boot camps with new recruits to train them for combat on the range. David Grossman, a retired military psychologist and West Point instructor, believes that violent video games train kids to kill in a similar fashion the way the military would train their raw recruits. Basic conditions for the way the military trains new recruits, Grossman says, is by “brutalization, classical conditioning, operant conduction, and role modeling,” and that each of these methods have parallels to the way players interact with many computer games. Kids are “brutalized” by the over-exposure to violence at a young age where they can’t yet distinguish between representation and reality. Grossman also claims that, “every time a child plays an interactive ‘point-and-shoot’ video game, he is learning the exact same conditioned reflex and motor skills” that the military uses for training and that such ‘practice,’ he claims, helped to prepare the Littleton and Jonesboro shooters for what they would do in real life. By that, he means to “reflexively pull the trigger, shooting accurately just like all those times [they] played video games…The result is ever more homemade pseudo-sociopaths who kill reflexively and show no remorse. Our children are learning to kill and liking it.” Many take the same distaste in video games as Grossman, but his views have flaws. There is no room left for meaning, interpretation, evaluation, or expression and he assumes that every person feels that way with no conscious or subconscious activity on the gamer’s part. But his model only works if we assume that all game players are not capable of rational thought and ignore important differences in how and why people play games. • “Columbine families sue computer game makers” BBC News Online http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1295920.stm (1 May, 2001) • “Make Meaning, Not War: Rethinking the Video Game Violence Debate” Independent School 63 no4 http://www.nais.org/index.cfm (Summer 2004) • “Video Game Firms Seek Dismissal of Columbine Suit” Internetnews.com staff http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/print.php/805431 (20, July, 2001) http://www.corpnews.com/features/200104/24/01-EDT/page2/ |
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threshershark | 11-23-04 3:41pm Good job, Jackie! It's very well writen. The only thing is you could use a little more in-text citation, and in your thesis you ask what the good and bad effects might be but you only talk about the bad effects, so you might want to change it. Cool info, though. What class is that for? |
shinigami | Re:, 11-24-04 9:22am It's not quite finished yet, that's just half of it. It's for my rhetoric class though, and yes, I'm going to do more and better in-text citiations! LOL. It's all going to be fixed, no worries. I'll post the final copy of it if you want. |