“I’m not one to get in there and say monitor everything, but if this indeed is a strong link, right, to mass killings, then why aren’t we looking at frequency of purchases per person, and also how often they’re playing, and–maybe they time out after a certain hour,” Fox News Channel host Elisabeth Hasselbeck submitted on Tuesday in the wake of the mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard.
She insisted that the shooter who allegedly enjoyed playing videogames, Aaron Alexis
“If you’re a parent and you allow your son or daughter to watch this, even if they’re beyond 18-years-old, you’re a lousy parent in my opinion,” bellowed MSNBC host Ed Schultz while holding a copy of the latest Grand Theft Auto. “If you think as a parent this is good for your kid, you’re wrong. It’s not.” He added that game players and their guardians “play a role” in future mass shootings.
Even in straight news reports, an obligatory nod towards the scourge of Grand Theft Auto is practically required. MSNBC anchor Craig Melvin, interviewing the grief-stricken brother of Newtown massacre victim on Wednesday, asked if he thought video games are linked to violence. “That has a lot to do with it,” the teenager drafted into the pro-gun control movement replied.
None of this is responsible commentary or journalism, but it is predictable. This kind of fallacious reporting occurs every time a new Grand Theft Auto game is released.
“[T]eenagers, and even some adults who play the game, may not be able to separate fantasy from reality and
“The theme of hurting other people and disrespecting women and people of authority is disturbing,” read a quote from Norwalk Hospital child and adolescent psychologist Dr. George Uy in that same 2001 report. “You get points for doing certain things. You should get points for doing positive things.”
“The purpose of the game is to perpetrate crime,” said Dr. David Walsh from the National Institute on the Media and the Family on NBC’s Today on that same day in December, 2001. “You advance in the game by getting more proficient at crime. Now, that’s a game, you know, that I really have a — have problem with and certainly not appropriate for children.”
Highly publicized incidences of violence inspire journalists to dig into the studies which suggest that an increase in violent tendencies can be linked to violent videogames. Often, those stories suggest that the evidence is “inconclusive,” when in fact it rather conclusively debunks the notion that videogames inspire people with violent impulses to act out more than other stimulative experiences like movies, television, music, or art.
“This casting about for circumstances outside the individual that allegedly propel him to become something that he wasn’t just doesn’t even make common sense,” clinical psychologist Dr.
“What I hope people realize is that there is no data to support the simple-minded concerns that video games cause violence,” Lawrence Kutner, co-author of a book dispelling notions that videogames play a role in violent outburst, told Reuters in March. His book, summarizing years of sociological studies on children and teenagers, surmises that, while his book is not “pro-game,” it is pro-evidence. And the evidence does not suggest that there is a link between game playing, even excessive game playing, among well-adjusted youths and violent behavior.
“The opposition to gaming springs largely from the neophobia that has pitted the old against the entertainments of the young for centuries. Most gamers are under 40, and most critics are non-games-playing over-40s,” read a study published in The Economist in 2005 on the subject of the prospect of violence inspired by the release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in 2004.
Still more compelling is the fact that homicides over the last twenty years have steadily decreased even as these games’ popularity has exploded.
“Compared with 1993, the peak of U.S. gun homicides, the firearm homicide rate was 49% lower in 2010, and there were fewer deaths, even though the nation’s population grew,” reads a study via the Pew Research
Baseless as the claims that videogames inspire violence may be, there will always be thoughtless commentators who disregard the evidence in favor of a righteous emotional outburst. It is a bipartisan phenomenon worthy of derision. The terrifying fact of the matter is that senseless violence is just that.
[Photo via Rockstar Games]
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