Video Game Violence Needs Curbing

Calif. Lawmaker Agrees With APA

By Ed Thomas
August 22, 2005

(AgapePress) - The American Psychological Association has recently acknowledged that violence in video games is bad for children's health, and that exposure to violent game content increases anger and aggressive thoughts and behavior. Those facts are nothing new to one California legislator, who has been a leader in the fight to reform the electronic game industry's most violent products.

Leland Yee, the Speaker of the California Assembly, is a lawmaker whose academic training is in psychology and education. For some time now, he has been adamant that ultra-violent video games are damaging America's youth.

Electronic "first-person shooter" games and other computer and video games with high levels of violent combat "will cause a lot of youngsters grave harm," Yee contends. "And what I mean by that," he explains, "is that they will learn how to maim and how to kill and how to hurt other individuals."

The state lawmaker concurs with experts who say their research indicates that youngsters are learning lessons in violence while spending hundreds and even thousands of hours playing these games. It is such research that has led the APA to call for changes in game design, with games starting to link violent acts to negative social consequences and having the industry cut back on the overall amount of violence.

The APA is also in agreement with Yee that video game ratings need to reflect accurately the kinds of violence in the games. However, the California assemblyman has been blocked twice in legislative attempts to enact tighter controls on the electronic game industry. Meanwhile, industry officials cite other research that reportedly disputes any links between video game violence and aggressive behavior.

But that the link exists is beyond doubt as far as Yee is concerned. "You may not find that in every single case," he says, "but [video game violence] does in fact influence a lot of children, and that is what is so unfortunate."

Even now, a controversial video game is at the center of a civil lawsuit involving the murders of three men in the small town of Fayette, Alabama, who were gunned down by 18-year-old Devin Moore, a youth who had allegedly played the game "Grand Theft Auto" day and night for months. Jack Thompson, an attorney who has long advocated against video-game violence, is bringing the suit and contends that the teenager was given "a murder simulator" and was, in effect, trained by the game to do what he did.

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