by Don Kwikshot

Created on: March 23, 2009

I know that this is a foolish thing to say, but in my humble opinion, children should not be encouraged, perhaps not even allowed, to play video games. There is a whole world outside of the computer which offers all of us a great deal in every kind of way; retreating into the world of make-believe which our screen can conjure up is a kind of escapism which should be frowned upon.

Having said all that, I honestly do not believe that violent games create violent children. Swith on the TV at almost any time of day and, in South Africa at least, all we tend to be exposed to is violence. Our thresholds of tolerance for bloodletting or for beating each other up in all sorts of ways have been all but obliterated by the constant diet of poor American movies to which we are subjected. It seems far more likely to me that a child will grow up to accept that a high level of violence in society is acceptible if all he is subjected to on turning on the TV tends to bear out this belief.

I am certainly not a violent person. I rarely ever lose my temper and certainly never resort to swatting an opponent in an argument, nor do I use my car as some sort of weapon on the roads, but I do love violent computer games! Perhaps it is because the violence of some of these games acts as a safety-valve for my own frustrations. I find that, after a particularly difficult day, I can enjoy annihilating opponents on the computer for half an hour!

A very good simile is the subject of pornography. Some amongst us believe that seeing pornographic videos or photographs encourages children to become sexual predators or to indulge in some sort of indecency as a matter of form in their daily lives. However, long before computers were ever thought of for the home, Scandinavian countries unbanned all kinds of pornography and made it readily available to anyone who cared to browse along the shelves of certain bookstores. Did this result in Scandinavians being sex-maniacs and rushing out into the street to rape and pillage at the slightest temptation? No, of course not. Conversely, in countries such as the UK, where all kinds of pornography were utterly banned until almost forty years ago, there was a much greater tally of sexually-oriented crimes. Think about it.

Ultimately, a parent who really cares about what sort of person he or she is rearing will not allow a child unfettered access to the Internet or to computer games. There can be no doubt that an over-abundance of such material can warp a child's mind, can alter his values, can lower his individual threshold. However, it is incumbent upon us, as parents, to ensure that our children grow up with a good understanding and appreciation of the world around us, and that they certainly do not concentrate on philosophies or ways of acting out their frustrations which are quite inappropriate to the society in which we live.

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