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Video game military tactics desensitize children

Survey of retail practices
An informal survey indicates that the video game industry is still promoting violence to children, says the spokesperson of a coalition wanting government to regulate video games.

"In this, our second annual survey, we spoke to the managers of 20 stores and found that up to 85 per cent of the video games that retailers are selling are promoting violence as a means of solving problems," says Esther Epp-Tiessen, spokesperson for Violence Is Not Child's Play. Epp-Tiessen also coordinates the peace program for MCC Canada.

"We would like to see government step in and regulate the video game industry with age restrictions in the same ways they regulate the movie industry."

Epp-Tiessen says 40 volunteers, including children, parents, grandparents, and university students, visited stores throughout Winnipeg and rated each store as either commendable, acceptable, needing improvement, or unacceptable. She says the ratings were used to reflect the nature of the games stores were selling combined with promotional marketing techniques.

She says "unacceptable" stores included Wal-Mart, Zellers, Superstore, and Toys-R-Us. She says the stores failed because of the amount of space they are allocating to violent games, the methods they are using to display the games they are selling, and the store policies regarding the sale of violent games to young children.

Social responsibility
"Violent games have become increasingly popular over the past several years," says Epp-Tiessen. "Video games have a real impact on young people. If we look at comparative data for television, it is not hard to see that we will be seeing the negative results of violent video games in the near future. We already know there was a link between violent video games and the massacre that took place at the school in Littleton, Colorado."

Epp-Tiessen points to a study done by retired U.S. Army psychologist David Grossman that outlines the effects of changes to military training policy in the 1950s. She says Grossman's study explains how the newly-adopted training practices were designed to mute the brutalization of murder for soldiers in training.

"Grossman says de-sensitizing is what has caused the phenomenal increase of violence in our culture," says Epp-Tiessen. "We know that exposure to violence will increase aggressive behaviour. We know that exposure to violence will increase a person's sense of fear. We know that exposure to violence will de-sensitize all of us to the violence that is happening in the world. This is what we are teaching our children."

Epp-Tiessen says that Violence Is Not Child's Play has produced a brochure dealing with the subject matter. She says video games are not the sole contributor to growing violence in North American society, but she does note the significant role that videos play in the lives of young people.

"In North America, we have such an individualistic mentality; we expect parents to be solely responsible for their children," she says. "We don't have a sense of social responsibility. We seem to have forgotten that the idea that it takes a village to raise a child."

The Winnipeg campaign was sponsored by Christian Peacemaker Teams, Mennonite Church Canada, MCC, and Project Peacemakers.

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