There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.
—Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa
You’ve read the statistics, the failed excuses, the real-life examples. You’ve heard from the killers themselves. Although parents, researchers, and concerned community members like you have been alarmed about this state of affairs for quite some time, change has been slow in coming. Here are some of the failed attempts that have been made to curb the dangerous influence of violent video games and other media on our children.
In the previous chapter, we often referenced the ESRB’s ratings for video games. At a bare minimum, parents must know and enforce this kind of media rating system. It should be considered the base standard to guide your family’s entertainment decisions. If you allow a child under the age of seventeen to go to an R-rated movie, for example, or if you take a child under the age of thirteen to see a PG-13 movie, then your personal standard is lower than the standard of Hollywood. Similarly, you should understand the video game rating system—although this system is much more flawed and less reliable.
In 1993, Congress ordered the video game industry to establish its own rating system, or legislators were going to do it for them.1 This is what they came up with:
A (AO): Adults Only. “Content suitable only for adults ages 18 and up. May include prolonged scenes of intense violence, graphic sexual content and/or gambling with real currency.”
M: Mature. “Content is generally suitable for ages 17 and up. May contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.”
T: Teen. “Content is generally suitable for ages 13 and up. May contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, minimal blood, simulated gambling and/or infrequent use of strong language.”
E10: Everyone 10+. “Content is generally suitable for ages 10 and up. May contain more cartoon, fantasy or mild violence, mild language and/or minimal suggestive themes.”
E: Everyone. “Content is generally suitable for all ages. May contain minimal cartoon, fantasy or mild violence and/or infrequent use of mild language.”
Given this scale, you would think that hyperviolent games like the Postal and Grand Theft Auto series would fall into the AO category. Wrong. Games violent enough to make this rating are extraordinarily rare. Only overt pornographic behavior will get an AO rating. Online gambling will ensure the rating, but no amount of extreme violence appears to be sufficient to command it. The only exception to this rule that I can find is the game Manhunt 2, which has an AO rating in the computer version (although, in some bizarre video game logic, the Wii version—in which you actually rehearse the physical acts of beating, hacking, strangling, and stabbing people to death, but with some violent images deleted—has an M rating).
The entertainment industry acknowledges a responsibility to keep gambling and porn away from kids but takes a different stance on marketing violence. Notice that games rated AO and games rated M can both have “intense violence.” In my presentations to educators and mental health professionals, I ask, “What is the great developmental leap that takes place between age seventeen and eighteen?” This always gets a laugh because there is no difference. The AO rating clearly was set up as a smokescreen, conning parents to think, “It’s not an AO, so it must be okay.”
It’s clever marketing to rate the second tier of games Mature. Every kid wants to be mature! As parents we often praise our children for being mature, telling them how proud we are of their behavior. Conversely, we know it cuts deep when we tell our children that we are disappointed by their immaturity. By the same token, you can practically hear your children saying, “I’m mature, Dad. You said I was mature. I can play a Mature game!”
The video game industry hid the severity of its content behind the AO rating and then gave these violent games the single most desirable term for kids: Mature. The entire rating system advertises, “Hey kids, play these games and be mature!” All of the most popular violent games are rated Mature, including Call of Duty, Halo, Grand Theft Auto, Manhunt, Postal, and many more.2
The other ratings are misleading as well. They’d like you to think of Teen as synonymous with PG-13 or “parental guidance suggested,” but it is really different. The industry’s own in-house experts say kids under thirteen should not be playing these games. Last, the biggest deception comes in the split between the E and E10 ratings. You’d think an Everyone rating wouldn’t require fine print, but E10 games are NOT recommended for children under ten. They have the “10” in a much smaller font. They actually hid it in the “fine print”! They could have said “Ages 10+,” but they threw the Everyone in there to really drive the deception home. What if the alcohol industry started using marketing slogans that proclaimed, “Booze Suitable for All Ages!” with just a simple disclaimer in a much smaller font of “Aged 21 and Above”? What if the tobacco industry marketed cigarettes to children, proclaiming “Cigarettes Suitable for Everyone!” with fine print reading “18 and Above”? You’d never stand for it as a parent.
The industry’s self-serving rating system is only the beginning. The industry regularly triumphs over common sense, utilizing vast resources—an army of lawyers and lobbyists—all focused on one singular objective: to enable their corporations to continue selling the most violent games to our youngest children without any restraint or regulation.
In 2005, California passed a state law that imposed a fine of up to $1,000 on any person who sells or rents a violent video game to a person under the age of eighteen. The law defines a violent video game as a game in which you “kill, maim, dismember, or sexually assault an image of a human being,” and one in which a “reasonable person, considering the game as a whole, would find it appeals to a deviant or morbid interest of minors.” The law was applicable to games that were “patently offensive to prevailing standards in the community as to what is suitable for minors.” The video games Manhunt 2 (in which you physically rehearse the actions of beating and stabbing human beings to death) and Postal III (in which you maim animals, murder humans, and urinate on your victims) would both fall under this category.
In response, the industry set out to convince the U.S. Supreme Court that they had a right under the First Amendment to sell these games to children. During the legal battle two briefs were presented. The first, which was written by 13 experts in the field of media violence and signed by 102 other scholars and scientists, made a clear statement about the harmful effects of violent video games on children. The second claimed that the medical community was wrong. It was supported and signed by 82 individuals, a large number of whom were video game industry representatives.
Since the two briefs directly contradicted each other on the impact of violent video games, a team set out to compare the credibility and qualifications of those who wrote and/or signed the briefs. The individuals whose names appeared on the first brief had published 338 times more articles on violence and aggression in leading peer-reviewed journals than the individuals who signed the second brief. Only 13 percent of the video game industry allies had written so much as a single article on media violence. Nonetheless, the video game industry was able to convince the Supreme Court that this was a case of “dueling experts,” and in the end they won.
The outcome was almost a foregone conclusion. An industry with billions of dollars was able to run roughshod over a handful of scholars who had virtually no resources at their disposal except for the truth. Seven Supreme Court Justices who, apart from watching in-court “demos” or videos of the games, had never seen the games on which they were making judgments—seven justices who had probably never played Pong in their lives—were convinced by the show. On June 27, 2011, the Court issued a 7–2 opinion striking down the California law as unconstitutional on the basis of the First and Fourteenth amendments. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority opinion:
Like the protected books, plays, and movies that preceded them, video games communicate ideas—and even social messages—through many familiar literary devices (such as characters, dialogue, plot, and music) and through features distinctive to the medium (such as the player’s interaction with that virtual world). That suffices to confer First Amendment protection.
Justice Scalia further noted that, although some states pass laws to block obscene material from minors, “speech about violence is not obscene,” which made California’s law unconstitutional.3
The two justices who wrote dissenting opinions—Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer—represent opposite ends of the conservative/liberal spectrum. Justice Thomas was particularly concerned about the welfare of minors, writing about the limitations of free speech when it comes to children:
The practices and beliefs of the founding generation establish that “the freedom of speech,” as originally understood, does not include a right to speak to minors (or a right of minors to access speech) without going through the minors’ parents or guardians.… The historical evidence shows that the founding generation believed parents had absolute authority over their minor children and expected parents to use that authority to direct the proper development of their children. It would be absurd to suggest that such a society understood “the freedom of speech” to include a right to speak to minors (or a corresponding right of minors to access speech) without going through the minors’ parents.
Justice Thomas cited multiple writings by our forefathers and others indicating that they knew that the stories we make available to our children have a profound effect on their development. He added that John Locke “taught that children’s minds were blank slates and that parents therefore had to be careful and deliberate about what their children were told and observed.” He also quoted founding father and framer of the Constitution John Adams, who believed that “children lacked reason and decision-making ability” and “have not Judgment or Will of their own.” He cited James Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention, in which Madison quoted Gouverneur Morris in “explaining that children do not vote[,] because they ‘want prudence’ and ‘have no will of their own.’” Quoting the eighteenth-century British politician James Burgh, author of Thoughts on Education (1749), Justice Thomas continued: “Children’s ‘utter incapacity’ rendered them ‘almost wholly at the mercy of their Parents or Instructors for a set of habits to regulate their whole conduct through life.’” He wrote: “The Framers [our Founding Fathers, the authors of the Constitution that guides our nation] could not possibly have understood ‘the freedom of speech’ to include an unqualified right to speak to minors.”
Justice Breyer’s dissent was more strongly worded and passionate in its defense of the palpable difference between free speech to adults and free speech to children. He began by saying that the Supreme Court, in previous decisions, “has held that the ‘power of the state to control the conduct of children reaches beyond the scope of its authority over adults.’…‘Regulatio[n] of communication addressed to [children] need not conform to the requirements of the [F]irst [A]mendment in the same way as those applicable to adults.’”
“Why are the words ‘kill,’ ‘maim,’ and ‘dismember’ any more difficult to understand than the word ‘nudity?’” he asked.
California’s law… prevents no one from playing a video game, it prevents no adult from buying a video game, and it prevents no child or adolescent from obtaining a game provided a parent is willing to help. All it prevents is a child or adolescent from buying, without a parent’s assistance, a gruesomely violent video game of a kind that the industry itself tells us it wants to keep out of the hands of those under the age of 17.
Justice Breyer also invoked the legal precedent of the Supreme Court’s upholding “laws designed to aid discharge of [parental] responsibility” and “the State’s ‘independent interest in the well-being of its youth.’” He noted that the Court previously:
pointed out that juveniles are more likely to show a “lack of maturity” and are “more vulnerable or susceptible to negative influences and outside pressures,” and that their “character… is not as well formed as that of an adult.” And we have therefore recognized “a compelling interest in protecting the physical and psychological well-being of minors.”
After establishing this key legal precedent, which enables us to pass laws that keep children from accessing alcohol, cigarettes, pornography, and firearms, he turns his attention to video games:
Video games are excellent teaching tools. Learning a practical task often means developing habits, becoming accustomed to performing the task, and receiving positive reinforcement when performing that task well. Video games can help develop habits, accustom the player to performance of the task, and reward the player for performing that task well. Why else would the Armed Forces incorporate video games into its training?
When the military uses video games to help soldiers train for missions, it is using this medium for a beneficial purpose. But California argues that when the teaching features of video games are put to less desirable ends, harm can ensue. In particular, extremely violent games can harm children by rewarding them for being violently aggressive in play, and thereby often teaching them to be violently aggressive in life. And video games can cause more harm in this respect than can typically passive media, such as books or films or television programs.
In essence, he asked, “They use video games to teach our military deadly combat skills, but we don’t have a legal right to restrict children’s access to them?”
Finally, Justice Breyer provides a list of some of the most important scientific and scholarly findings on the harmful impact of video games:
There are many scientific studies that support California’s views. Social scientists, for example, have found causal evidence that playing these games results in harm. Longitudinal studies, which measure changes over time, have found that increased exposure to violent video games causes an increase in aggression over the same period.
Experimental studies in laboratories have found that subjects randomly assigned to play a violent video game subsequently displayed more characteristics of aggression than those who played nonviolent games.
Cutting-edge neuroscience has shown that “virtual violence in video game playing results in those neural patterns that are considered characteristic for aggressive cognition and behavior.
And “meta-analyses,” i.e., studies of all the studies, have concluded that exposure to violent video games “was positively associated with aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, and aggressive affect,” and that “playing violent video games is a causal risk factor for long-term harmful outcomes.”
Some of these studies take care to explain in a common-sense way why video games are potentially more harmful than, say, films or books or television. In essence, they say that the closer a child’s behavior comes, not to watching, but to acting out horrific violence, the greater the potential psychological harm…
I, like most judges, lack the social science expertise to say definitively who is right. But associations of public health professionals who do possess that expertise have reviewed many of these studies and found a significant risk that violent video games, when compared with more passive media, are particularly likely to cause children harm.
Eleven years ago, for example, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American Psychiatric Association released a joint statement, which said:
Over 1000 studies… point overwhelmingly to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children… [and, though less research had been done at that time, preliminary studies indicated that] the impact of violent interactive entertainment (video games and other interactive media) on young people… may be significantly more severe than that wrought by television, movies, or music.
Five years later, after more research had been done, the American Psychological Association adopted a resolution that said:
Comprehensive analysis of violent interactive video game research suggests such exposure… increases aggressive behavior,… increases aggressive thoughts,… increases angry feelings,… decreases helpful behavior, and… increases physiological arousal.
The Association added: “The practice, repetition, and rewards for acts of violence may be more conducive to increasing aggressive behavior among children and youth than passively watching violence on TV and in films.”
Four years after that, in 2009, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement… about interactive media. It said:
Studies of these rapidly growing and ever-more-sophisticated types of media have indicated that the effects of child-initiated virtual violence may be even more profound than those of passive media such as television. In many games the child or teenager is “embedded” in the game and uses a “joystick” (handheld controller) that enhances both the experience and the aggressive feelings.4
It added:
Correlational and experimental studies have revealed that violent video games lead to increases in aggressive behavior and aggressive thinking and decreases in prosocial behavior. Recent longitudinal studies… have revealed that in as little as 3 months, high exposure to violent video games increased physical aggression. Other recent longitudinal studies… have revealed similar effects across 2 years.
Justice Breyer is baffled in his dissent. In essence he asked, “Have you even read the research on this topic? How can you ignore it? How could you have been conned by these bozos in their ten-thousand-dollar suits?”
I agree. In an article in Variety magazine, I said to the entertainment industry, “Do not take any solace in the babblings of ‘Media Studies Professors’ who claim that they know better than our medical community when it comes to the health impact of media violence. Can you honestly convince yourself that these individuals know more than the American Academy of Pediatrics when it comes to the health impact on children? These ‘professors’ are completely unqualified in this field, and are committing academic malfeasance at the highest level. In the end, they will be, and should be, viewed as the moral equivalent of Holocaust deniers.”5
This is not a partisan issue. Great potential exists for consensus across political divides, as evidenced by Justices Breyer and Thomas both arguing against the video game industry. Numerous states passed or proposed bills to limit video game access to minors prior to the Supreme Court decision. Through its trade association, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the video game industry tracked more than sixty proposed bills nationwide.6 In each case, the legislation was fought by the video game industry—it either never passed or was slapped down by court appeals.7 Other states have not enacted video game legislation because the video game industry has found a foothold in the protection of the First Amendment for their irresponsible behavior.
The video game industry is now fighting researchers’ efforts even to study the link between violence and violent video game entertainment. In 2013, the Wall Street Journal reported:
Legislative proposals to study whether videogames are linked to real-life violence or mental health—prompted by a rash of mass shootings—have stalled amid a campaign by the industry to quash the efforts, according to lobbying records and lawmakers.… The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) declined to say how much it is spending on lobbying on the state and federal bills. The group has deployed at least three lobbying firms and its own lobbyist to represent its interests.… According to records, the ESA had spent $3.9 million on state and federal lobbying-related expenses of all sorts this year through Sept. 30.8
In the face of this blatant disregard for the health and well-being of our children, I believe that the dissenting justices’ arguments in the California case prove that there is potential for a constitutional amendment to protect children from violent visual imagery. Justice Samuel Alito, while agreeing with the majority in the California case, drafted a note that sets the stage for future courts to reexamine the situation:
In considering the application of unchanging constitutional principles to new and rapidly evolving technology, this Court should proceed with caution. We should make every effort to understand the new technology. We should take into account the possibility that developing technology may have important societal implications that will become apparent only with time. We should not jump to the conclusion that new technology is fundamentally the same as some older thing with which we are familiar. And we should not hastily dismiss the judgment of legislators, who may be in a better position than we are to assess the implications of new technology. The opinion of the Court exhibits none of this caution.…
There are reasons to suspect that the experience of playing violent video games just might be very different from reading a book, listening to the radio, or watching a movie or a television show.
He wrote that we can “foresee the day when ‘virtual-reality shoot-’em-ups’ will allow children to ‘actually feel the splatting blood from the blown-off head’ of a victim.” Would selling that game to minors be considered an issue of free speech? Justice Alito added:
In some of these games, the violence is astounding. Victims by the dozens are killed with every imaginable implement, including machine guns, shotguns, clubs, hammers, axes, swords, and chainsaws. Victims are dismembered, decapitated, disemboweled, set on fire, and chopped into little pieces. They cry out in agony and beg for mercy. Blood gushes, splatters, and pools. Severed body parts and gobs of human remains are graphically shown. In some games, points are awarded based, not only on the number of victims killed, but on the killing technique employed.
It also appears that there is no antisocial theme too base for some in the video game industry to exploit. There are games in which a player can take on the identity and reenact the killings carried out by the perpetrators of the murders at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech. The objective of one game is to rape a mother and her daughters; in another, the goal is to rape Native American women. There is a game in which players engage in “ethnic cleansing” and can choose to gun down African-Americans, Latinos, or Jews. In still another game, players attempt to fire a rifle shot into the head of President Kennedy as his motorcade passes by the Texas School Book Depository.
If the technological characteristics of the sophisticated games that are likely to be available in the near future are combined with the characteristics of the most violent games already marketed, the result will be games that allow troubled teens to experience in an extraordinarily personal and vivid way what it would be like to carry out unspeakable acts of violence.
The Court is untroubled by this possibility. According to the Court, the “interactive” nature of video games is “nothing new” because “all literature is interactive”… Disagreeing with this assessment, the International Game Developers Association (IGDA)—a group that presumably understands the nature of video games and that supports respondents—tells us that video games are “far more concretely interactive.” And on this point, the game developers are surely correct.…
Think of a person who reads the passage in Crime and Punishment in which Raskolnikov kills the old pawn broker with an axe. Compare that reader with a video-game player who creates an avatar that bears his own image; who sees a realistic image of the victim and the scene of the killing in high definition and in three dimensions; who is forced to decide whether or not to kill the victim and decides to do so; who then pretends to grasp an axe, to raise it above the head of the victim, and then to bring it down; who hears the thud of the axe hitting her head and her cry of pain; who sees her split skull and feels the sensation of blood on his face and hands. For most people, the two experiences will not be the same.
We all love stories where David defeats Goliath, but those stories are satisfying precisely because they are very rare. Goliath trampled David when the video game industry took this issue to the Supreme Court.
Still, the truth persists. The ugly reality of Columbine and Sandy Hook intrudes on the video game industry’s victory, and the magnitude of its guilt builds with every year. A day of reckoning is coming for this industry. In the fight to reach that day, I hope Justice Breyer’s passionate plea from the conclusion of his dissent will be our mantra:
What sense does it make to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman, while protecting a sale to that 13-year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively, but virtually, binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her? What kind of First Amendment would permit the government to protect children by restricting sales of that extremely violent video game only when the woman—bound, gagged, tortured, and killed—is also topless?
This anomaly is not compelled by the First Amendment. It disappears once one recognizes that extreme violence, where interactive, and without literary, artistic, or similar justification, can prove at least as, if not more, harmful to children as photographs of nudity. And the record here is more than adequate to support such a view.
Finally, he makes this telling point to any of us who care about our children, our nation, our civilization, and our future:
This case is ultimately less about censorship than it is about education. Our Constitution cannot succeed in securing the liberties it seeks to protect unless we can raise future generations committed cooperatively to making our system of government work. Education, however, is about choices. Sometimes, children need to learn by making choices for themselves. Other times, choices are made for children—by their parents, by their teachers, and by the people acting democratically through their governments. In my view, the First Amendment does not disable government from helping parents make such a choice.
In 2007, a sixteen-year-old boy’s parents told him he wasn’t allowed to purchase the game Halo 3 because it was too violent. He snuck out and purchased the game anyway, playing it while housebound due to an illness. His parents discovered the game and took it away, locking it in the family’s lockbox, where the parents also stored their handgun.
Shortly thereafter, on October 20, 2007, the boy stole his father’s key to the safe in order to get the game back. His father testified that the boy came up behind him as he sat on the couch and said, “Would you guys close your eyes? I have a surprise for you.” The boy then shot his mother in the head, arms, and chest, killing her. He also shot his father in the head, though the father survived. The boy tried to place the gun in his father’s hand, while he was wounded, to make it look like a murder/suicide. He then fled their home with the game in tow.9
At trial, the killer’s defense attorney argued that because of the stress of his illness (a staph infection), the murderer was more susceptible to the psychological effects of the game. He lived in a state of suspended reality, the defense attorney argued, and didn’t think his parents’ deaths were real or permanent.
After finding the defendant guilty on all counts in the indictment, Judge James Burge made the following statement to the court:
It’s my firm belief as a human being that [the killer] suffered from a serious defect of the mind.… My opinion would be that most of the activity that is required for success in these games takes place in the limbic system of the brain, where the issue is to act or not react, and do it accurately. And I believe that the reward or stimulus that this provides is sufficient to cause the release of large amounts of dopamine, the same as would be released were someone to ingest cocaine or any other drug with amphetamine properties. Otherwise, you couldn’t play 10, 12, 15, 18 hours at a time.
My firm belief is that these physiological changes, which are caused by the game itself, also cause organic changes in the brain. I believe that, just as depression and anxiety can cause changes in the brain… an addiction to these games can do the same thing.
The dopamine surge, the stimulation of the nucleus accumbens… the same as an addiction, such that when you stop, your brain won’t stand for it, just as it won’t stand for it if you decide you’re going to quit heroin or crack cocaine.
The other dangerous thing about these games, in my opinion, is that when these changes occur, they occur in an environment that is delusional because you can shoot these aliens and they are there again the next day. You have to shoot them again.
And I firmly believe that [the defendant] had no idea that at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever. That is the state of mind that this young man was in at the time of these offenses—that death would not be permanent, but that the addiction to this game was so strong that his parents [sic] temporary death would turn on a light for them so they could see just how serious he was.
I also firmly believe that if we did a study of these games and the children who played them.… I think there will come a point when this will be a valid defense. But we’re not there yet.
The challenge is to all of us in this room to find out what these devastating effects are.…
Hilary [sic] Clinton said something I agree with. She said it takes a community, a village to raise a child. And I believe that. I believe that when these tragedies occur, it’s incumbent upon us all to say we knew what was going on in the inner city. We knew that you weren’t safe at night. We knew that children were carrying firearms to commit robberies.…
We all know of these problems that video games can have caused. And we haven’t done anything about it. Because it was [another] family, not mine. But unless we start to learn from some of these societal mistakes, we are going to repeat them.
I believe this is true of drugs, sex offenders, and people who commit homicide. That’s my view. That this is a project for our own safety and self-protection. That this is a project we must all embrace. I believe in the not too distant future, when more attention is paid to us as citizens, individuals, we can learn some valuable lessons. Prevent future tragedies, and, at the same time, mollify some of those tragedies we’ve already experienced.
Following the law is not easy.… But I believe there’s hope here. I believe that it will start here, and at some point, when all is known about what occurred here, we will be able to achieve a greater sense of justice. I’ve said over and over, as far as I’m concerned, this is a new country now. A country where those in charge and those who voted actually care about [these families] and want to recapture all of these folks that our society has lost through our own fault.10
He also ordered tests to “lay the foundation for further inquiry.” The murderer was sentenced to 23 years in prison without the possibility of parole.
The U.S. isn’t alone in its failed attempts at change. After it was announced that a seventeen-year-old boy who killed 16 people played games like Counter-Strike and Far Cry 2, a group of German interior ministers requested that the country’s parliament ban the production of “Killerspiele,” which directly translates to “killer games.” The lawmakers believed these violent games reduced inhibitions, posing a risk to public safety. The draft bill is quoted as stating that “the production and distribution of games in which a substantial part of the game consists of realistically portrayed killing or otherwise gruesome acts of violence against human or human-like creatures are to be forbidden.”11 This bill, and others like it, continue to work their way through the legislative and judicial systems of countries around the planet. In every single case, the vast might and wealth of the video game industry has been applied to defeat the legislation.