Awhile back, I made mention of a video game, Grand Theft Auto V. Within a couple of days of its release it had made over a billion dollars in sales. That is a truly astronomical figure and considering what the game is about some may wonder if life as we know it is being ruined by video games in general.
Don't know what I am talking about? Perhaps you don't have a child above the age of ten in your house. Or maybe you don't own a gaming console. As the name implies most of the series is about grand theft, either of or committed with cars and that's the lighter side of the game. Then there's the possibility of hooking up with prostitutes, having your way with them and then beating the tar out of them to get your money back. Although there is a main story line, the general idea is to commit as many crimes as you can possibly get away with all whilst avoiding or taking out the police.
Video games are certainly making a splash in a big way. Many of them such as the GTA series, are outselling every other form of media out there, including books, television, music and even blockbuster movies.
A lot of these games explore and even glorify the bad things that we do to one another. There are quite a few different gaming franchises where the entire purpose of the game is to murder a bunch of other guys before they murder you. Except instead of murder its called warfare. Semantics.
Are these games ruining the moral fiber of our country? I don't think so. I think it is the parents that allow their children to play these games that are damaging our country. And the problem isn't even the fact that they let them play the games. The problem is that they let the video games do the parenting, instead of teaching their kids between right and wrong.
Many young kids and teenagers today have such a screwed up moral compass because the only moral lessons they have received is murder, maim or mess up the other guy, before he can do it to you. Video games are just tools. While primarily designed solely for entertainment purposes, if there is no other source of teaching, they will teach the morals and ideas that are within them.
If however, we, as parents, teach our children right from wrong, how to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys, and that we want to be the good guys and then don't let our kids play the games that have all of those potential "bad" lessons until they have shown through their way of being that they are on the "right" path, then any game, no matter how violent or morally questionable goes back to simply being a way of blowing off steam. It becomes just a fun thing to imagine, but something we would never do in real life.
When I was a kid, I used to tell my parents that video games had a large range of potential positive effects, things like, improving my memory, teaching pattern recognition, improved creative problem solving and increased hand to eye coordination. They, of course didn't believe me. But when we played the same games I always beat them. Their excuse was they didn't know the game. My reply was to point out that knowing the game had to do with memory and pattern recognition. I got told to shut up.
Since then, numerous studies have been done proving all those things and more can be gained or improved upon by playing video games. I have seen first hand, through my son, about the memory, pattern recognition and problem solving. He is three years old and his favorite game in the world is Lego Marvel Super Heroes. He knows the names of over a hundred of the characters and can correctly pronounce about ninety of them. He knows what symbols on the screen represent the need for what type of hero, remembers who has what powers, who flies and who doesn't. And if there is some mechanism that he has seen work in an area before he knows what needs to be done every time he gets back to that area.
Plus, video games have been used as rehabilitative tools for people with a wide variety of mental and physical disabilities. Is there the potential for great evil in our world due to video games? Yes, but the same could be true of any tool. The evil comes not from the tool itself but from how and when it is used. It would be more accurate to say bad parenting is the bane of modern society.
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