At the ‘Electronic Entertainment Expo’, which took place in Los Angeles in May, the U.S. Army presented two computer games, in which the user learns to kill against a backdrop of real war locations or military operations, such as the caves in Afghanistan or the cages at Guantanamo Bay. 1.2 million of these CDs will be given to, preferably, teenagers. Alternatively, the games can be downloaded from the Army’s website, which means they are also accessible to children. The Army hopes this will help them to recruit more soldiers. It has invested millions of dollars for this purpose—a sum that is not usually spent without good reason.
There is a huge industry behind all this which dominates the market and employs what Dave Grossman, professor of psychology and officer at the U.S. elite Military Academy at West Point, calls ‘pet-scientists’ (scientists who produce just the findings the industry needs). The question remains, however: Why this political agenda of the media industry? Money could be made from good films and videos that convey peaceful values, too. Films that touch positive human feelings are box-office hits.
The army is aware of the link between violent games and the readiness to kill. It is intended that children and youths practice killing. (This is happening at a time when many Americans have begun to see through the veil of deception and propaganda after September 11. They may not as readily support new wars in the interest of hegemony.)
Nasty video games are being advertised in American magazines as follows: ‘It is important to feel something when you kill, psychologists say.’ Or, ‘Kill your friend without feeling guilt.’ Or, ‘This is more fun than killing your neighbours’ cat.’ Such statements can be found next to advertisements for computer games for children.
Is this how child soldiers should be recruited—not much different from the way it is done in Africa? Once before in history, in the last century, large-scale systematic militarisation of youths was carried out—under Adolf Hitler.
Professor Grossman has been warning for years against the ‘poison that we are pouring into our children’s lives.’ What he is talking about are nasty video games. It has long been scientifically recognized that there is a link between violence portrayed in the media and the increase in violence in society. As early as 1972, the then American secretary of health revealed the facts. In 1982 the renowned National Institute of Mental Health assessed 2,500 scientific studies and came to the conclusion that there is a clear connection between violence in the media and violent behaviour in children. In 1992 a report by the American Psychiatric Association stated, unambiguously, ‘the scientific debate has been closed.’
At a bipartisan, bicameral Congressional conference—which is basically both houses, both parties of the US Congress—on nasty video games in 2000, the participating doctors, paediatricians, psychologists and psychiatrists concluded: violence in the media causes children to be violent. They made it very clear: nasty video games are particularly dangerous because of their interactive nature. Scientific studies refer to a ‘Mean World Syndrome’, the world around oneself is perceived as mean and hostile. People suffering from this syndrome will show a stronger tendency to abuse their own children, and they will be more fearful.
The fact that the U.S. Army now wants to give away such video games for free and make them accessible on the Internet is a cause of concern to Europeans, too. Up to now there have been no restrictions on what is available on the Internet, at least not in our countries. What are we doing to our children and youths? We expose them to ‘games’ which are being used to rid hardened soldiers in the army of their inhibition level in close combat.
These violent video games have an impact on the adolescent’s emotional life at a time when his whole personality is in a difficult phase of development. No longer a child, but not yet an adult person, the adolescent’s whole emotional life is still vulnerable. Everybody knows that this is an extremely sensitive phase that the young person goes through. One single wrong word can cause a turmoil. Even self-confident children may lapse into a feeling of inferiority. This feeling then needs to be compensated, and the stronger it is the more compensation it requires. Such a feeling of inferiority can give rise to an adolescent’s decision to adopt the tough, ‘male’ values in order to feel ‘superior’. This is known as the ‘male protest’. Such children act as if they could deal with anything: In front of the computer screen, with the joystick in their hand, they feel they are the greatest! ‘I’ll get all my enemies, before they get me.’ But these violent scenes breed huge, increasingly deep-seated feelings of anxiety in the children up to the point when they are convinced that their very lives are in danger! The child is frightened to death, and one way of counteracting these fears is with a rapid reaction, with ‘acts of violence’. This is worse and also more dangerous than anything we have experienced up to now because this is systematic training.
Dave Grossman suggests laws should be passed everywhere to prevent the sale of nasty video games to children. Norway is the only European country which has passed such a law. When Norwegian representatives tried to convince the EU member states to introduce such a law, they were greeted with laughter. Quebec has also passed such a law, and although it is one of the poorest provinces in Canada, they have one of the lowest crime rates.
A next step—according to Grossman —would be to limit access to video games. As a third step he recommends that children should not have unrestricted access to the Internet. No child should be permitted to have access to the Internet without a ‘filter’. Excellent such software products are already available.
In addition to these important demands, we must ask ourselves what we can do in our role as citizens, parents, pedagogues, psychologists … in a world where the structures we used to be able to rely on have become increasingly brittle and undermined, no longer existent, where what unites people with one another is being progressively dismantled.
How can we address young people and win them over so that they reject this poison of their own will? How can we build up an inner barrier against violence?
Here, too, the question is ‘how a young person can be reached, on an intellectual as well as emotional level, so that the person feels truly meant, emotionally moved, able to form trust and to open up. These are the conditions under which a genuine dialogue can develop, where a young person becomes receptive to new ideas and capable of deciding in favour of a constructive positive path in life.’ (cf. A. Buchholz et al. ‘Teachers must be allowed to educate again’, in this edition; p. 3). We have to build up this inner dialogue in order to create a stronger feeling of togetherness with the younger generation. This will enable the adolescent to acquire the inner strength to resist the lures of the media world and build up an inner barrier against them.
We must get our adolescents out of this subculture and develop with them other ways to contribute actively and constructively. Together with young people we must develop ways in which they learn to use their abilities and ideas to build a better world and to work towards the common good.
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