Letters to the Editor
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let's stop playing games
“Video games cause violence!”
“No they don’t, because you can’t prove it, and the hero is nice to nerds, and they’re really cool with, like, 80 characters!”
Right. But we all might agree with psychologist Craig Anderson that, “a video game captures attention, maintains attention.” Attention that would otherwise be available for tasks that seem to be required to develop and maintain healthy human functioning. Like interacting in a real social environment, or learning to solve problems in real environments.
A depressed woman avoids activities which would improve her mood; an anxious man displaces constructive thought and attention with unfounded worry. A therapeutic challenge for both is to re-engage in activities and thoughts that improve their functioning and happiness. An at-risk, alienated, withdrawn, and angry teen addicted to Bully avoids real experiences that could be empowering, socially rewarding, and critical for healthy adolescent development. The potential harm isn’t about violent behaviors that are induced or learned, but about potentially empowering growth experiences that are pre-empted by the “enchanting and addictive” game.
Like Ebonius said, these teens are wasting valuable time needed for real experiences critical for healthy development. Instead of vicariously defending nerds while sitting on their asses in front of a video screen, they could be documenting real harassment in their own schools, then getting in the administration’s face with it. That would be empowering. Or training in martial arts, which might be somewhat more empowering than passively viewing simulated offers to learn “some badass fighting moves”.
In any case, video games don’t cause Columbines. Columbines happen when vulnerable kids are humiliated and rejected in a way that feels like a death sentence, enough so to elicit desperately violent acts. Deviant kids are targeted for humiliation by other kids who are insecure about their own status (thus real prospects) in social systems in which winners and losers are identified and tracked for success or failure in life. In high schools the academic achievers are tracked for future success, and the jocks and others with lower status are unconsciously driven by primal impulses to compensate for their lowered status the best they can. Bullying is one consequence.
We create in our schools a microcosm of the social pathologies we tolerate and celebrate in larger society, where winners and losers are identified by access to status and wealth rather than grades and style. But questioning the class-based, ranked-for-success-or-failure structure of schools would be worse than unthinkable – it could lead to questions about the maintenance of class, poverty, and privilege in larger society. Far less discomforting to accept a Columbine per week. We would just require more arguments and studies about video games or drug use or family values to distract us.