Central Interference: Parents Cannot Protect Children from Violent Videogames

The United States Supreme Court is currently considering a case related to a California law, which would ban the sale of violent videogames to customers who are under 18 while providing for significant punishment for those who break its provisions.

Lower courts have already said that the law is unconstitutional because of the First Amendment. But California State Senator Leland Yee, who leads the effort to create the law, still maintains that children cannot be protected from exposure to violence by their parents, which justifies the intervention of the state.

Talking to the Los Angeles Times, Yee admitted he has little experience with videogames but says “I'm not a player. But I have seen individuals who play these games. I have seen individuals using a baseball bat and bludgeoning a [tramp] to death, or taking a gun and shooting a cop. Those are the direct result of someone pushing a button and making a conscious decision. I can see that that kind of connection between your action and the consequent behavior is dangerous.”

Yee also believes that movies, which have offered the public the same violent imagery as videogames, are less threatening because they can be fully reviewed by parents and rating boards before they are shown, while games like GTA IV or Modern Warfare are so big and offer so many side quests that no one can fully predict what a player stumbles upon. Yee seems to think there's only a cabal of gamers who can get access to content others, including ESRB officials and professional reviewers, do not ever get to see.

Interestingly, Yee himself admits that his children were allowed to play videogames as long as he could see what they were doing, which basically means that while he is distrustful of the capacities of other parents to screen unsuitable content, he believes that he was perfectly able to regulate content for his kids.