More sex in your violence?
From the rocket-propelled grenade that shoots down a police helicopter to the punch in the face delivered to a former friend, the depictions of realistic violence in the newest "Grand Theft Auto" video game are raising fresh concerns. And gamers can’t wait to play.
Video game popularity and real-world youth violence have been moving in opposite directions. Violent juvenile crime in the United States reached a peak in 1993 and has been declining ever since. School violence has also gone down. The U.S. Secret Service intensely studied each of the 37 non-gang and non-drug-related school shootings and stabbings that were considered "targeted attacks" that took place nationally from 1974 through 2000.
The Secret Service found that there was no accurate profile. Only one in eight school shooters showed any interest in violent video games; only one in four liked violent movies.
On the other hand, reports of bullying are up. Our research found that certain patterns of video game play were much more likely to be associated with these types of behavioural problems than with major violent crime such as school shootings.
For many children and adolescents, playing video games is an intensely social activity, not an isolating one.
When I watched the game, I caught one sequence that would seem sure to prompt outrage -- your character gets falling-down drunk and can, if he wants, steal and then drive a car. The scene is undeniably fun and funny. Admittedly, the humor is low-brow, more in the tradition of "Jackass" than of Oscar Wilde, but it's still fun; like much else in the game, it's the thrill of discovery, the sense of, "Whoa, I can't believe I can do that!"
Of course, that'll be exactly the sentiment of the game's detractors: Can you believe they're letting children do that?! This has to be illegal!
Well, actually, nobody is letting kids play this game. It's rated M, which means it's for sale to people 17 or older. Kids will still get it, of course, just like they also get hold of R-rated movies and all kinds of perversities on the Web.
But nobody -- at least nobody sane -- calls for movie houses to refuse to play R-rated movies just because kids might sneak in. It's hard to see why the policy should be any different with video games.
The taxman cometh?
All those hours of playing "Halo" are creating halos of chub around our guts. That's Gail Chasey's theory, anyway. The New Mexico lawmaker has proposed the "Leave No Child Inside" bill, a 1 percent tax on TVs, video games and video game equipment. The tax would raise an estimated $4 million a year to be used in improving education and fighting childhood obesity.
There have even been activist groups who claim that letting a child become obese is child abuse, or neglect. While letting your child become obese is irresponsible and bad parenting, it is not abuse. But once this mindset has become ingrained into the public’s thought process, it will be easier for the government to regulate (tax). All parents, and others who aren’t parents who just happen to be buying a product that has been targeted, like televisions, will have to pay the price for those parents who are irresponsible.
How can medical experts who see obesity as a critical problem deal with an ideological landscape tilted in the direction of doing nothing?
One answer is to focus on the financial costs of obesity, and the fact that many of these costs fall on taxpayers and on the general insurance-buying public, rather than on the obese individuals themselves.
Above all, we need to put aside our anti-government prejudices and realize that the history of government interventions on behalf of public health, from the construction of sewer systems to the campaign against smoking, is one of consistent, life-enhancing success. Obesity is America's fastest-growing health problem; let's do something about it.
