Headshots: Violent video game and the targeting of our children
The proliferation of violent subject matter in marketing and entertainment is nothing new. Mass media and its deluge of blood soaked mechanisms have long served as a form of entertainment for consumers in search of a release from their mundane lives. Multi-national corporations plot ways to hype their newest video game to consumers hungry for a more realistic experience. Game studios produce hyper-violent fairytales where humans hunt and kill other humans and get rewarded for their unspeakable acts. Meanwhile, news streams provide the masses with a flood of information about mass shootings taking place in schools and movie theaters, atrocities increasingly being carried out by …show more content…
It is their opinion that partaking in these games don’t actually affect its young players. A twelve-year-old boy quoted in Mr. Bakans book shares insight into his thought, “It’s just fun blowing people up” (Bakan 20). Underage, self-professed avid gamer, “Eric” admitting “Violence (in video games) definitely affects the player, you get more used to seeing violence and you become more tolerant of it.” (Netzley 9). This change in the children’s thinking has fueled a national debate on the topic. With many groups arguing that society’s overall acceptance and general passiveness towards violent material has America’s youth in a dangerous frame of mind. Aaron White and Scott Swartzwelder, adolescent psychologists and authors of What Are They Thinking?! “Repeated exposure to violence in video games has many dire consequences. It desensitizes players to violence. It diminishes the significance and consequences violent acts by rewarding violent choices” (White and Swartzwelder 238). This lack of moral compass in the youth playing these games which is believed to be hind some the most horrific mass shooting in the world. Meanwhile, staunch defenders and companies who apt to lose significantly with the regulation of video games throw every idea they can to prevent any controls from being placed on their …show more content…
In Paducha, Kentucky a fourteen-year-old with no prior shooting experience fired at eight schoolmates. He launched the rounds with such accuracy they connected with the heads of five class mates and the torsos of three others. On April 20,1999 two shooters, seventeen and eighteen years old entered Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado and proceeded to kill 14 classmates and teachers before taking their own lives as SWAT teams surrounded them. On December 14, 2012 a young shooter entered Sandy Hook Elementary in Newton, Massachusetts wearing black military fatigues and murdered twenty children under age seven and six adults (Netzley 17). In a different case, a convicted mass shooter who confessed his crimes where a direct result of his video game playing penned an angry letter to his jailors. In it he expressed his frustration with the conditions of his game choices in jail while serving his twenty-year sentence. He demanded he be allowed to play the same adult theme games his fellow inmates were playing and also wanted a custom modified Playstation or he would go on a hunger strike. He closed his letter stating, “You’ve put me in hell and I won’t manage to survive” (Netzley, 18) These young men show no remorse as they commit these acts. These and other examples being just a few of the
The proliferation of violent subject matter in marketing and entertainment is nothing new. Mass media and its deluge of blood soaked mechanisms have long served as a form of entertainment for consumers in search of a release from their mundane lives. Multi-national corporations plot ways to hype their newest video game to consumers hungry for a more realistic experience. Game studios produce hyper-violent fairytales where humans hunt and kill other humans and get rewarded for their unspeakable acts. Meanwhile, news streams provide the masses with a flood of information about mass shootings taking place in schools and movie theaters, atrocities increasingly being carried out by …show more content…
It is their opinion that partaking in these games don’t actually affect its young players. A twelve-year-old boy quoted in Mr. Bakans book shares insight into his thought, “It’s just fun blowing people up” (Bakan 20). Underage, self-professed avid gamer, “Eric” admitting “Violence (in video games) definitely affects the player, you get more used to seeing violence and you become more tolerant of it.” (Netzley 9). This change in the children’s thinking has fueled a national debate on the topic. With many groups arguing that society’s overall acceptance and general passiveness towards violent material has America’s youth in a dangerous frame of mind. Aaron White and Scott Swartzwelder, adolescent psychologists and authors of What Are They Thinking?! “Repeated exposure to violence in video games has many dire consequences. It desensitizes players to violence. It diminishes the significance and consequences violent acts by rewarding violent choices” (White and Swartzwelder 238). This lack of moral compass in the youth playing these games which is believed to be hind some the most horrific mass shooting in the world. Meanwhile, staunch defenders and companies who apt to lose significantly with the regulation of video games throw every idea they can to prevent any controls from being placed on their …show more content…
In Paducha, Kentucky a fourteen-year-old with no prior shooting experience fired at eight schoolmates. He launched the rounds with such accuracy they connected with the heads of five class mates and the torsos of three others. On April 20,1999 two shooters, seventeen and eighteen years old entered Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado and proceeded to kill 14 classmates and teachers before taking their own lives as SWAT teams surrounded them. On December 14, 2012 a young shooter entered Sandy Hook Elementary in Newton, Massachusetts wearing black military fatigues and murdered twenty children under age seven and six adults (Netzley 17). In a different case, a convicted mass shooter who confessed his crimes where a direct result of his video game playing penned an angry letter to his jailors. In it he expressed his frustration with the conditions of his game choices in jail while serving his twenty-year sentence. He demanded he be allowed to play the same adult theme games his fellow inmates were playing and also wanted a custom modified Playstation or he would go on a hunger strike. He closed his letter stating, “You’ve put me in hell and I won’t manage to survive” (Netzley, 18) These young men show no remorse as they commit these acts. These and other examples being just a few of the