Violent video games need restricting

Common sense tells us that when children play video games in which the main theme is gross violence, their world-view is altered. To suggest otherwise would be to assert that mediated messages have no meaning. That, however, is exactly what the Entertainment Merchants Association would have us believe, based on a Supreme Court hearing earlier this month.

This free-speech case was generally lost in the flood of election reporting, but it is an important case that directly impacts the ability of states to protect children from the harms of violent video games. The state of California passed a law five years ago to penalize merchants who sold such video games to minors. Since then, the entertainment industry has bottled up enforcement of the law in courts. The Supreme Court finally got the case this month.

As usual, when it comes to controversial media content, the entertainment industry is trumpeting its First Amendment rights — in this case to market violent video games to minors. Don’t be fooled, however; these media producers have no real interest in First Amendment philosophy. They only want to make as much money as possible, even at the expense of our kids’ emotional development.

The games in question feature graphic portrayals of violence, carried out by the video game players. Police officers are shot. Women are decapitated. Shooting victims have gasoline poured on them and are set ablaze. The shooters urinate on their victims. The content is considered mature, even by the producers and distributors. That’s why the industry, itself, has instituted a label warning system and has voluntary restrictions against sales to children. Those restrictions don’t work, however, because merchants sell this stuff to kids anyway. “Secret shopper” research by the Parents Television Council finds that retailers sell these games to kids more than a third of the time.

The attorney for the video game industry, Paul Smith, trotted out the same, tired “absolutist” arguments for the Supreme Court, suggesting the First Amendment was designed to be a free-for-all, with no restrictions whatsoever. This is nonsense, of course, as was once pointed out even by staunch free speech defender Justice William Brennan. He wrote in a 1957 obscenity decision that “the unconditional phrasing of the First Amendment was not intended to protect every utterance.”

Smith also told the court there wasn’t “a shred of evidence” to support claims that children’s moral development is affected by violent video games, obviously ignoring the extensive research of psychology professor Craig Anderson at Iowa State University. Anderson reports “with utmost confidence” studies that show violent video games increase “aggressive thinking and aggressive affect, and decreases prosocial behavior.” Professor Darcia Narvaez at the University of Notre Dame recently wrote that these games lower “the activation of brain areas for thinking, learning, reasoning and emotional control,” thus disrupting moral development.

Courts have long affirmed the interest of states in protecting the well-being of children, at times relying on simple common sense to base a decision. That was the case in the 1960s, as Chief Justice John Roberts pointed out, when the court allowed states to restrict the sale of pornography to kids.