Mayhem at a Fingertip
In pizza parlors and bedrooms, bowling alleys and skating rinks, an estimated 92% of teenage boys now play an average of 10 hours of computer games a week. Many of the games, in which players score points by, say, ripping heads off enemies, are not pretty.
The evidence that such fantasy games encourage kids to commit violence in the real world is thin, but the perception that they do has spurred recent calls in and out of Congress for federal oversight of the unregulated industry. To ward off overly intrusive regulatory schemes, video game manufacturers should begin credibly and thoroughly labeling violent content, and video store owners should ensure that children don’t purchase games supposedly restricted to adults.
Video games have nominally been rated on the basis of appropriate age since 1994, but even industry leaders like Doug Lowenstein, president of the Interactive Digital Software Assn., admit that fewer than 1% of more than 5,000 games rated since 1994 have been rated “AO,” for adults-only. Moreover, only 40% of parents surveyed by the Minneapolis-based National Institute on Media and the Family said they routinely checked the ratings of the games their children bought or rented, and only 21% of retailers said they enforced ratings policies on the sale of games.
Support for regulating the video industry began heating up in Congress earlier this year, after a rash of school shootings by avid players of violent video games. In May, nine U.S. senators, including Al Gore’s running mate, Joseph I. Lieberman, sent a letter to big store chains asking them to stop selling violent video games to children. And two weeks ago, the American Medical Assn., the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Assn. and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry joined in, issuing a statement that violent video games can increase “aggressive attitudes, values and behaviors, particularly in children.”
The scientific evidence linking violent video games with real-world aggression is skimpier than the joint statement might suggest. It hinges on studies like one published in the June issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, wherein 210 college students playing violent or nonviolent video games were asked to punish an opponent with a computer-generated horn blast. Those who played the violent video games tended to use longer and louder horn blasts. Lowenstein rightly criticizes the study. Suggesting “that someone who blows a horn in a lab loudly will commit acts of violence in the real world,” he said, “is a stunning leap of logic.”
Still, industry leaders like Lowenstein are too dismissive of their medium’s social power. Video games are probably less significant causes of real-world violence than other factors, including the degree of parental guidance and access to guns. That they have some influence is, however, hard to deny.
As Sabrina Steger--whose daughter was killed in 1997 when a 14-year-old video game addict opened fire on her Paducah, Ky., high school--asked at a congressional hearing last March: “How can we deny that hours of repetitive video play affect [teenagers when] . . . the advertising industry is built on 30- to 60-second spots that influence what soft drink or car we buy, or what candidate we vote for?”
It’s a good question.
