My heart goes out to all of the friends and families of the people killed and injured Monday at Virginia Tech.
I was watching the coverage Monday night and Dr. Phil McGraw was interviewed (I believe it was by CNN). Before the name of the shooter even came out, he was claiming that violent video games were to blame. Why should they be to blame if we don't even yet know if he played them? I didn't see the interview, but it's been written that Jack Thompson has said the same thing. Yes, it's true that some of the past school shooters had played violent video games, but how many of these games have been sold in the U.S. alone? If you take the percentage that played them compared to the percentage that go out and shoot/rob/etc someone...Taking away everyone's violent video game because they might go commit crime is like taking away someone's car because they might fall asleep behind the wheel.
Parents aren't as involved with their children as they used to be. My parents knew my brother's and my friends, what we watched on T.V., what video games we were playing, decided when we were mature enough to handle movies that had adult themes. If we really wanted to watch/play something, we could plead our point (because so-and-so gets to was never a good argument). Occasionally we changed their mind. It doesn't seem like parents do that anymore. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't want to overgeneralize. I know there are parents out there that still do, but it seems like more and more don't bother. I wonder sometimes why some people have children. They don't seem to want to have much to do with them. Will parent interaction stop all crime? No. There will always be those that were abused, are mentally unstable, etc, but I'd be interested to see how many could be prevented if parenting got back to being parenting instead of trying to just get along or be friends with their kids.
Interesting article on parents "bribing" their kids.
No comments:
Post a Comment