Chilldren's exposure to video game violence is parents responsibility

Early last week, CNN ran a story that raised issues of censorship, violence in the media and morality that has now become one of our nation’s latest bandwagon controversies.  The story revolved around a genre of Japanese video games that, due to the pervasiveness of technology in the modern world, is now receiving global attention.  The specific game causing controversy is titled “Rapelay,” a game in which the goal is to corner and rape an unsuspecting woman.  While this is obviously a horrible concept to base a game around, the reactions that people are having are slightly unwarranted and the hype being generated completely media-based.

Due to the fact that CNN ran this story as their leading headline, activist groups of all types are now taking part in the groupthink that is occurring and analyzing what they see as this game’s damaging effects on our society.  More than anything being discussed is the continuing conversation of how these violent games affect the mentality of children. 

However, the ironic part is that children would never even be exposed to these games if it wasn’t for the omnipresent reality that is technology.  “Kids generally never hear about this stuff unless it gets this kind of publicity,” Cheryl Olson told CNN.  She references a previous incident with the Grand Theft Auto games in which hackers uncovered a crude and gruesome sex scene.  The public would never have been made aware of this scene if politicians hadn’t publicized it and attempted to make an example about how horrible these kinds of games are for children.

This publicity has led to numerous activist groups attempting to have the Japanese government regulate these games in order to protect their children from the harmful effects.  But one should ask:  where are the parents in all of this?  Why do we need governmental control over basic things such as which video games are appropriate for our children to be playing?  This mentality stems from a series of problems with the typical 21st century parent.  We now allow our children to be babysat by agents of technology more than ever before.  Because of this we feel the need to have an even higher authority then ourselves take control over the situation in an attempt to have one less thing to monitor ourselves.  However, the real problem is that, for children, things such as this game are inescapable.  The exposure to media is almost constant and regulation, even by the government, is completely not plausible.

And here we reach one of many contradictions in this age of modernism: we look to technology for the future and yet we completely turn a blind eye to the almost equal amount of negative implications it brings with it.  This constant connectedness has shrunk the world to a point that anything, such as a controversial video game, will be publicized and create a general awareness for the public.  A lot of times this hurts much more then it helps.  We are constantly so concerned about the effect of the media on the developing brains of our children and yet we are trapped in this world where it is impossible to live in ignorance from things such as a video game designed around rape.  Articles will be written about it, discussion forums will be organized, experts will offer their opinions, and it will all be presented to you through these boxes of technology that we have built.  There is no such thing as living unaware from things such as this anymore and much of the time I feel that we would live in a much happier society if it were possible to.