Video games the cause of social ills?

Here we have in recent news, a child who was found dead. Apparently this child ran away because his parents prevented him from playing some video game for a day. The news media kept bringing up the issue of video games as being addictive and that people should look into it. This is one of those examples where the news media functions more on sensationalism to sell their news programs or newspapers to make money. Facts go out of the window, no thought is processed and we all spend our time listening to rhetoric and never go beyond the surface.

Now I don't want to get into the issue of how most of the news we hear is usually misrepresentation and that if you really want to know what really happened in something or other it is usually best to find out for yourself. The issue of the blog is the aftermath of this tragedy: after the child was found dead. The father goes on TV and explains that his child was into sports but because he didn't grow up physically as fast as others of his same age group he was rejected from the sports team. This rejection brought the child into the world of video games and its alleged addictions which created the social ill we all have witnessed (the child running away and being found dead). Yes, the child running away is tragic and the fact that he is found dead later on is beyond tragic (words can never describe the agony). The father wants to start up a fund to allow children who may not have the same physical development as others their immediate age range and allow them to participate in sports programs. This is noble and great and highly encourageable. What I find distasteful is that the video game is transformed once again into the scapegoat that causes social ills.

Before someone gets into a debate of whether or not video games are addictive or cause violence or whatever.... my argument is not whether video games are this or are that, my argument is that you can find the same components: the addictive elements, the encouragement of violence or lack of both etc., and find them in sports as well as video games. The ratio of addicted would be the same, the over-zealousness can be found in one as well as the other. The only difference is that sports are "socially acceptable" and that video games are "fringe activities". Our North American culture presumes that the sport is an adult activity and that the video game is a childish activity.

If the child had been into a music band and was rejected because he was not skilled enough in music for whatever reason and this child became enamoured with baseball and spent all his waking hours thinking breathing eating baseball (none of us would call that an addiction, we would call that dedication and we would encourage him in this activity). But because it was a video game, it immediately becomes suspect because the parent in question never took the time to get into his child's new interests. (See my previous blogs on how our society steals our time away from our families so that we can produce more and enjoy less of our produce) Lets continue this hypothetical situation by introducing the fact that the parent of this baseball lover is himself a musician or has a strong musical background and never understood sports or the camaraderie that you can get in sports. The child is neglecting his chores, or neglecting his studies or neglecting something (the child is unable to balance his time properly for whatever reason). This parent, who has no understanding of sports, wants his child to get some perspective so he prevents his child from doing any baseball for a day. How does the child react? It is not beyond the realm of imagination to see that this child under these circumstances may run away. Remember, he was rejected in one activity and has fallen in love with the new activity where he is accepted and he is successful and now his grump of a dad has dared prevent him from playing baseball or practicing outside with friends. "My dad spends all his time at work and never with me, why can he do what he wants and I can't?" So the child rebels and runs away.

Ideal? Of course not, but this illustration shows that the same situation can happen from being "too-involved" in another activity. Is video games to blame? Of course not, any activity could have been practiced. It is unfortunate that the communication breakdown occured between the parent and the child which brought about these events. But blaming video games is cosmetic and only deals with the symptom of the real problem. The parent did not understand the issues of the child while it was happening and thought by eliminating the one thing that seemed to isolate the child from the rest of the family would solve the problem.....

The real problem is that we don't have time to heal or to investigate our immediate relationships because we must continue to produce, produce and produce. Take the quick fix, it will solve the problem.... if it doesn't then you mis-diagnosed the problem, take the proper quick-fix for the proper problem..... you can't discern the problem properly? No problem, we have psychologists, day cares etc to take away your problem so that you can continue to produce, produce and produce!

If the parent was given the time by his society to develop a healthy relationship with his child, he would have played video games with his child, then brought him out to play some sport as well and encourage him to read up on his studies at school etc and lead by example the balanced lifestyle. The parent was not given the time and now the parent thinks that video games were the problem and will continue believing that because none of us will give him the time to "think" about it for a few minutes.

Great! A program is invented to allow disadvantaged children to play sports! But if you dump your child off in that program because you think it will avoid the video game addiction, you may have just replaced one addiction with another and a similar tragedy will not be prevented in the future. The ideal solution is to give us time to enjoy our families, our work produced, our citizenship responsibilities.... instead we proceed to take away time from what truly matters--> to work, work and work (which in reality is no longer work in the healthy sense but "produce, produce and produce!!!" in the self-destructive sense).

Sympathies to any parent who loses a child in such tragic circumstances. Encouragement offered to this new sports program.