Should the children who killed a seven-year-old "Mortal Kombat-style" be tried as adults?

No

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by Secre

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Now this question doesn't actually tell me how old the child killers were but using the word 'children' as my backing I assume they are under 18, and probably under 15. So does a child have the moral compass of an adult, and are they fully responsible for there actions? Using UK laws the answer has to be no. How old do you have to be to buy alcohol or cigarettes? The answer is 18. Legal age to vote? 18. Want to drive? 18. Legal age for sexual relations? 16. Join the armed forces? 16. Marry without parental consent? 18. Can you see the trend here? In the UK you have to between 16 and 18 to hold adult responsibilities. The legal age for being able to be tried in a court of law is 10 and the age to be tried as an adult is 18. What does this tell us? Well, to me it says that anybody under the age of 18 isn't capable of having the rational reasoning of an adult. Children aren't fully rational, and they need protecting from themselves, because they are well capable of doing stupid things without fully understanding the consequences.

Video games and children
There has long been an argument that violent video games like mortal combat can make children violent, and there are several backings for this. The main one is that children don't necessarily understand the difference between reality and fiction. If you use this as a fact, then a child may not be able to understand the consequences of what they are doing. On a computer game, the enemy gets back up and is OK, or you can restart the level and everything is back to the way it was before. Video games can't be used as a cause for full scale psychopathy, but a series of researchers such as Funk (1993) have found a direct correlation between violent video games and short term violence, even more so than with violent television. It has been suggested that this is because playing a video game isn't passive like watching a television program, you are actually doing the killing.
Mortal Combat is one of the most popular third person killing games - in which the player controls a character doing the killing in contrast to actually looking down the barrel of a gun - and is rated M for mature, or 18 in the UK. Again what does this suggest? That even the game manufacturers have judged the game as being unsuitable for young people, because it may have a NEGATIVE EFFECT on children. It may cause them to mimic scenes in it on other children, it may show them that violence is OK, that their role model in the game is committing a violent act and so this is the way to gain respect. All of this reasoning is based on very basic social psychology and has been backed up as well as argued against, but it does suggest that children are severely influenced by what they see and what they play. If this is true, how can we judge the child when they are solely mimicking something they have seen and not understanding the true consequences of their actions.

Teenage hormones
It is well known that teenagers are not the most stable of beings in the universe to begin with, all those hormones racing around the body causing unprovoked violence, mood swings and in general the typical teenager. Teenagers need special help from parents and trusted responsible adults, it's one of the most difficult times of a person's life. If we are not willing to put the effort into educating and helping our youth of today to grow into respected adults then what can we expect? Are we as a society as much to blame for our youth's behaviors as the individual parents?

Parents
Whose responsibility does a child's actions really lie with and personally I believe it is the parents, the parents should instill morality into children from an early age and keep them on the straight and narrow. Where were the parents or teachers when the 7 year old was killed? What were they doing? And how come they couldn't stop their children from committing such atrocious acts? In truth I more pity the children than blame. I dread to think of the home life they have had to make the acts that they committed seem reasonable and right. I can't imagine that they had a wholly balanced upbringing, as I know even though I didn't have an easy childhood I would never have acted in such a physically violent way. For a child to act in such a way shows a major problem in there upbringing. And whose to blame for that? Any child needs a role model, and it is their role models behavior they are going to emulate, and to behave in that sort of way I believe they must be getting some pretty mixed messages from their role models and from society in general. Sexual abuse, violence, drug and alcohol abuse are almost written off as normal in some areas of our world, and what example does that set for our youngsters?

Other reasons
Children rarely commit violent acts without some background, some reason - logical or illogical. You see, children have less coping mechanisms for stressful situations and children who have bad upbringings have even less in the way of coping mechanisms. For example you can have the children who have been brought up with the stereotypical idea of big boys don't cry, and then you get what is equivalent to a volcano of pressure and at some point it will explode. Or violence when a child has internalized a stupid amount of pain and pressure, either they're being abused, or watching violence at home, they feel they have no control or power and so they act violently in other areas of there lives to gain that control back. This is the way they've been brought up, violence is the only form of control, and this is where their violent acts come from. Neither of these two reasons are excuses or good, however it shows that unless a child is taught coping mechanisms then they will not learn how to handle situations in an adult and reasonable way.

Conclusion
Were the children to blame? No, you can't fully blame the child as they don't have the full mechanisms of a responsible adult. So can you try them as an adult? No. The parents and society should the ones put to shame for the way they are bringing up the youth of today. Society should take more responsibility for the youth of today, and parents should clean up their acts. When young children are behaving in such violent ways there is a problem with society that should be sorted, and it won't be sorted by punishing young children.

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