by Luis Garay

Created on: August 29, 2008   Last Updated: July 07, 2011

Since the days of Beavis and Butthead, parents have been over concerned with the fact that their children are being exposed to violence and overall bad behavior. Over cautiousness leads to parents babying their kids for too long and therefore rendering them incapable of being self-reliant. However exposure to mediums such as violent video games may turn them into a violent criminal, or so parents think.

The truth is so long as you do right by your kids and teach them everything you know to be right then they should be capable of distinguishing between right and wrong and between reality and video games. Essentially those who truly believe in video games warping their kids' minds are not doing a very good job of parenting. All my life I grew up with video games, some more violent than others. Just because I go and play Grand Theft Auto (which I did when I was younger) it doesn't make me want to go rob cars and stick up old ladies for cash. However I do agree that over exposure to violent video games can seriously desensitize a young mind should it not be properly prepared for such. The best way to do that is to teach our kids the difference between what is right and what is wrong. We need to sit down and explain to them that it's alright to blow up cop cars in a video game but when it comes to real life it is no joking matter. So long as they can grasp this concept then there should be no confusion.

If we can't let our kids play violent video games then you may as well not let them watch violent movies, or television (especially violent channels like CNN and BBC with all that war coverage). If we as parents are trying to pull out the stops in order to make our kids less violent, we have to realize that there are a lot of stops to pull out. Video games are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to violent influence. There have been problems with violence long before video games were invented.

Ever since violent video games hit the market they have been the perfect target for parents looking for someone to blame for their lack of parenting. The only problem is the fact that people have been violent since the beginning of time and now that there is something to blame that's what we as a people do, we point fingers. All the finger-pointing must stop because if anyone is seriously at fault it is the parents. Video games don't breed killers, parents do, especially bad parents. Everybody knows that those who come from broken homes with abusive parents are more likely to be violent and abusive themselves.

So why are we all of a sudden pointing the blame at the video game industry? And as I mentioned earlier, if we really aim to put a serious stop to this violent threat, there are a lot more stops to pull out aside from video games. So long as there are words like genocide and suicide bomber scrolling across that news ticker there will be violence in the world and not even shutting down every video game producer will put an end to our violent nature.

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