This is an article from Wired magazine:
How new media keeps corrupting our children.
by Tom Standage
US senator Charles Schumer says some videogames aimed at kids "desensitize them to death and destruction." But dire pronouncements about new forms of entertainment are old hat. It goes like this: Young people embrace an activity, Adults condemn it. The kids grow up, nobetter or worse than their elders, and the moral panic subsides. Then the whole cycle starts over. Here's how the establishment has greeted past scourges.
Novels:
"The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth; and prevented others from improving their minds in useful knowledge. Parents take care to feed their children with wholesome diets; and yet how unconcerned about the provision for the mind, whether they are furnished with salutary food, or with trash, chaff, or poison?" - Reverend Enos Hitchcock, Memoirs of the Bloomsgrove Family, 1790
The Waltz:
"The indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced ... at the English Court on Friday last ... It is quite sufficient to cast one's eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs, and close compressure of the bodies ... to see that it is far indeed removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is ... forced on the respectable classes of society by the evil example of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion." - The Times of London, 1816
Movies:
"This new form of entertainment has gone far to blast maidenhood ... Depraved adults with candies and pennies beguile children with the inevitable result. The Society has prosecuted many for leading girls astry through these picture shows, but GOD alone knows how many are leading dissolute lives begun at the 'moving picture.' " - The Annual Report of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 1909
The Telephone:
"Does the telephone make men more active or more lazy? Does [it] break up home life and the old practice of visiting friends?" - Survey conducted by the Knights of Columbus Adult Education Committee, San Francisco Bay Area, 1926
Comic Books:
"Many adults think that the crimes described in comic books are so far removed from the child's life that for children they are merely something imaginative or fantastic. But we have found this to be a great error. Comic books and life are connected. A bank robbery is easily translated into the rifling of a candy store. Delinquencies formerly restricted to young people and children ... All child drug addicts, and all children drawn into the narcotics traffic as messengers, with whom we have had contact, were inveterate comicbook readers ... This kind of thing is not good mental nourishment for children!" - Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 1954
Rock and Roll:
"The effect of rock and roll on young people, is to turn them into devil worshippers; to stimulate self-expression through sex; to provoke lawlessness; impair nervous stability and destroy the sanctity of marriage. It is an evil influence on the youth of our country." - Minister Albert Carter, 1956
Videogames:
"The disturbing material in Grand Theft Auto and other games like it is stealing the innocence of our children and it's making the difficult job of being a parent even harder ... I believe that the ability of our children to access pornographic and outrageously violent material on video games rated for adults is spiraling out of control." - US senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2005
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2 comments:
There were a lot of great articles in the new Wired, but I really enjoyed this one. I mean, you would think that there are more important things going on in the world than kids playing video games.
And, as I always say, the responsibility lies with the parents. If parents don't know what their kids are doing, playing violent video games, smokin' crack, surfing the web for porn, or whatever, then it's their fault.
People constantly try to pass the buck, refusing to take any responsibility and it pisses me off. It's not rock music's fault your kid shot up a high school. It's not a video game's fault your kid...shot up a high school (what else do kids do these days, other than shooting up high schools?). It's your fault for not paying any goddamn attention to your kid.
Yeah what he said. Parents need to do more parenting and stop letting the tv/video game be the babysitter. A lot of parents just don't care or don't take the time to look at what their kids are watching/playing. I can't even count the number of times that a kid (I am talking kids like 7-12ish) wants to get a game like GTA: San Andreas and I tell the parent its a violent game and they either 1. don't care or 2. are completely shocked. I tell them the ratings and content are on every game, and they had no idea. They have no clue what their kids are doing. It takes like a minute to check out the ratings on movies and games. Is that really such a burden on parents?
Now do I think video games or movies are the source of the problems with today's youth? No. While I don't think its a good idea for a 7 year old to play a game where he shoots cops and goes looking for hookers, I think the general neglect and apathy that allowed him to play the game in the first place is more the problem. I mean if a parent doesn't care what their kid is going for like 20+ hours a week that may have a more negative effect of the kid then the content of a video game. Most of the shit on the news is worse then what is in a video game anyway. Okay end of rant. :)
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