by Katherine Easi

Created on: September 10, 2009

Are the youth of today being corrupted by video games?

Many answers can be found to this question but, personally, I believe that there are only two... the good old-fashioned yes and no!

Of course the youth of today are being corrupted! Everywhere you look, we are reminded of the brutal, violent, gore-filled games that continue to corrupt and destroy the fragile, still-maturing minds of every teenager who have even the slightest interest in games. And you don't have to look far to see the incriminating games in question either. Adverts on the television, the radio, the Internet, everywhere that your average adolescent goes, a long stream of game advertising follows.

Heralded as one of the most popular game franchises of all time, the Grand Theft Auto Series has been at the centre of many of the accusations made towards games that corrupt children and teenagers alike. Time after time, all the allegations come back to the same accusations. Too violent, too gory, too explicit. Over the years, a lot of lawyers have compiled a lot of information that could be used against the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Their strongest weapon is the infamous "Hot Coffee" incident. In the first edition of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for the PC, there was a sequence of events you could watch that was not to everyone's taste. In the game, you could get a girlfriend and take her on dates. At the end of the third or fourth date, she might invite you into the house. Now, when you got into the house, the scene changed to both of the characters partially naked and they were engaging in foreplay and finally sexual intercourse. The player had to move the joystick, press certain buttons etc. to make the actions of the foreplay and sexual intercourse. This was frowned upon by many of the beta testers. Finally after a lot of disagreement this scene, aptly named "Hot Coffee" was removed from the final version of the game. Or so it was thought. In actual fact, the code was buried very deep under all the code of the game.

Of course there are two sides to every coin. There is only one real reason why children's minds are being corrupted, and that is because of negligence. On the parents part of course! Every child in the world whose name has been tarnished by claims that their minds are being corrupted by videogames is because of their parent's negligence. Their parents are the ones who should be blamed, not the children. Every single game has at least one rating and it is up to the buyer to respect this rating. If they buy 18+ games for their children, then that is negligence on their part.

In short, kids and teenagers minds are being corrupted by today's video games. But their minds wouldn't be corrupted if it weren't for their parents buying an unsuitable game for them in the first place.

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