We’ve seen it a million times before. Every time a new video game comes out, news organizations across the globe immediately publish thousands of op-ed pieces, all asking the same, redundant question: “Are our video games too violent for our children?” And, given the overly-descriptive nature of these editorials, I feel almost obligated to ask the following question:
Are our ‘Are Our Video Games Too Violent for Our Children?’ op-ed pieces too violent…
…for our children?
From The New York Times to Fox, from Vice to Vox, every day our precious children are being exposed to gruesome, gory, and utterly-depraved op-ed pieces about the excessive violence in video games. And oftentimes, the language in these editorial pieces is so vicious and depraved that it cannot help but pollute the minds of our naive, impressionable youngsters.
For example, when an anti-video game op-ed says something heinous like “Red Dead Redemption 2 is a bloody, scarlet, bullet-hole-riddled hellscape that has no place in the minds of our kids,” I’m sure that we can ALL agree that that previous sentence is in of itself a bloody, scarlet, bullet-hole-riddled hellscape that has no place in the minds of our kids!
Look, as parents, don’t we have a duty (nay, an obligation) to protect our children from the savage and brutal rhetoric of op-ed pieces that, in turn, were written about the savage and brutal content of video games?
Or did we forget how to be good role models?
Seriously. Just think about how we’re affecting our children! I mean, what kind of lesson are we trying to teach our kids, anyway? That it’s okay to use inappropriate words to describe the inappropriate content of games like Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty? That it’s okay to use disgusting (I repeat, DISGUSTING!) imagery, just so long as said imagery is used solely in the context of writing a trenchant video game critique?
Even more importantly, shouldn’t we be just the least bit worried that these editorials will actually desensitize our children to ALL cases of fictional violence? I mean, think about it… if a child spends too much time reading violent anti-video game op-eds, will he/she really be able to appreciate the kind of violence described in books like Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms? Or in Stephen Crane’s seminal classic The Red Badge of Courage?
And don’t even get me started on the explicit language that editorials use to describe nudity in video games.
That kind of smut?
In my household?
No sirree.
Look folks, I recognize that this kind of article has the potential to come off as “alarmist” or “reductive” or “overprotective to the point of obliviousness.” But, as a society, shouldn’t we at least address the increasing prevalence of violence in anti-video game editorials? And, as a parent who loves his children, don’t I have a responsibility to shield them from any (and all) depictions of blood, gore, lewdness, brutality, murder, cruelty, brute force, butchery, annihilation, carnage, killing, sadism, savagery-
Uh oh. My kids can’t read this op-ed piece, either… can they?