Anti-video games tome misses its target widely

A failed attempt to find roots of violence

By Steven Kent MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR

Dec. 9 — Stop Teaching Our Children to Kill, a new book describing the dangers of video games by Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman, a former Army Ranger who taught classes at West Point, is the intellectual equivalent of the computer game Doom. Grossman spends most of the book running around wildly shooting accusations at video games and the companies that make them, never stopping to examine the full ramifications of what he is saying and completely ignoring the facts when they get in his way.

This is the guy, for instance, who held a tasteless press event in Littleton, Colo., (shortly after the Coumbine High School shooting) in which he traded kids board games for video games.

LET ME PAUSE to say that I do not entirely disagree with Grossman. Unlike most members of the video game-covering press, I think Sens. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) were entirely correct when they called for a rating system. I also think it is foolish and irresponsible for parents to let young children play violent games or watch violent movies. Frankly, this is just common sense. Equally positive is the work of Dr. David Walsh of the National Institute on Media and the Family, who has spent the last few years monitoring the way the interactive entertainment industry implements the game rating system. I even agree with Daphne White, who as the head of a parent advocacy group called the Lion and Lamb Project, has pointed out that it is ludicrous to use ratings to say that games and movies are for mature audiences, then make kids’ action figures based on them.

OFF THE EXTREME END Grossman, on the other hand, ratchets these efforts to their extreme. This is the guy, for instance, who held a tasteless press event in Littleton, Colo., (shortly after the Coumbine High School shooting) in which he traded kids board games for video games. Politicians generally save this kind of tackiness for when they run for office, but Grossman is not running for public office. He apparently makes his living by consulting education and law enforcement agencies. And, of course, he has just released a book. Lt. Col. Grossman’s book seems to revolve around a few basic themes: Exposure to violent entertainment desensitizes youth to acts of violence and leads to aggressive behavior. Violent video and computer games are an ultra-effective way of instructing murder. Youth crime is rising in America as is the amount of violence in video and computer games. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that watching violent movies and playing violent games may lead to aggressive behavior. One of the fundamental studies along these lines was conducted by Len Eron, a professor at the University of Michigan, who followed the media-watching habits of 875 subjects over a 22-year period. Eron interviewed his subjects every 11 years from 1960 to 1982 and found “a significant relation between the violence of the programs that these kids watched at home and how aggressive they were in school.” His results showed that aggressive behavior decreases when people watch less violent television shows and increases when they watched more. According to Eron, there is a causal relationship between television-watching and aggressive behavior. In fact, he says that his study showed that media-watching habits account for 10 percent of aggressive behavior.

DEPARTURE FROM REALITY Eron is not alone. There have been many studies that have drawn a link between watching violent movies and aggressive behavior. What there has not been, until recently, is studies looking into violent games and aggressive behavior. This year a few studies have been published drawing a link between games and aggression. This research is fairly new, however. Grossman’s second point, that games are an effective way to teach people to kill, is where he begins to leave reality behind: Michael Carneal was not in the ‘average shootout.’ He did not have to deal with the anxiety of these unarmed kids shooting back at him. They were not seven yards away, prepared for his attack and hiding behind cover; they were unaware of the danger as they emerged from a moment of prayer.

If you don’t believe us, you should know that one of the most effective and widely used simulators developed by the United States Army in recent years, MACS (Multipurpose Arcade Combat Simulator), is nothing more than a modified Super Nintendo game (in fact, it closely resembles the popular game Duck Hunt, except with a plastic M16 firing at typical military targets on a TV screen).” (p. 74) The poster boy for this assertion seems to be Michael Carneal, the 14-year-old Kentucky boy who walked into a Paducah school and opened fire on a prayer circle. If you are looking for a direct link between these types of games and increasing rates in violence among children, you need look no further than the events at a Paducah, Kentucky, school a few years ago. Fourteen-year-old Michael Carneal steals a gun from a neighbor’s house, brings it to school, and fires eight shots into a student prayer meeting that is breaking up. Prior to stealing the gun, he had never shot a real handgun in his life. The FBI says that the average experienced law enforcement officer, in the average shootout, at an average range of seven yards, hits with approximately one bullet in five. So how many hits did Michael Carneal make? He fired eight shots; he got eight hits, on eight different kids. Five of them were head shots and the other three were upper torso. (p. 5) The obvious and overlooked fact here is that Michael Carneal was not in the “average shootout.” He did not have to deal with the anxiety of these unarmed kids shooting back at him. They were not seven yards away, prepared for his attack and hiding behind cover; they were unaware of the danger as they emerged from a moment of prayer.

IGNORING FACTS Grossman has played fast and loose with more than just logic, he’s also unaware of or ignoring important facts. According to a police report filed on Sept. 21, 1998, Carneal received firearms training with rifles at a local 4-H facility. Not only had he had rifle training, he’d actually had previous experience shooting the very weapon he used in his crime. Toby Nace, the son of the neighbor from whom Carneal stole the gun, told police that Carneal fired two full clips from that gun the weekend before the attack. But most video games teach you to fire at each target only once, hitting as many targets as you can as fast as you can in order to rack up a high score. And many video games give bonus effects… for head shots. It’s awful to note that of Michael Carneal’s eight shots he had eight hits, all head and upper torso, three dead and one paralyzed. (p. 76) To read Grossman’s text, you might think that Carneal happened upon a group of eight students praying and shot them all. The sad facts are that he attacked a group of approximately 50 kids packed together tightly. Carneal told psychologists that he aimed “straight across [the] room at [the] wall on [the] other side of [the] crowd and not at individual people.” And as for “many video games giving bonus effects for head shots,” I assume Grossman is referring to The House of the Dead and The House of the Dead 2, two Sega games. My job requires me to spend a lot of time playing video and computer games, and the vast majority of shooting games, which is a minuscule minority of the games on the market, give you a kill no matter where you hit your target. Grossman is also ignoring another Sega game called Virtua Cop, which rewards players for shooting weapons out of enemies’ hands.

VIOLENCE RISING? This leads us to Grossman’s last and most errant contention, that youth violence and video game violence are on the rise: According to a report released last week, too late for Grossman to reference it in his book, the number of violent crimes is still falling. I do not understand how he can nonchalantly dismiss a five-year drop because it is too short, then continue to speak as if crime is actually on the rise.

It’s that simple. As the content of television becomes more violent, so do our children. Since 1982, television violence has increased by 780 percent and in that same time period teachers have reported a nearly 800 percent increase of aggressive acts on the playground. (p.26) Interestingly, Grossman does not cite where this information comes from in his book, and I do not see how anybody could ever quantify either statistic. Grossman’s book includes two nifty little graphs — one showing the steep rise of violence among female youths and the other among males. Both show huge jumps, particularly between 1985 and 1995. In an act of honesty, they also show a drop between 1995 and today. He even addresses the positive drop: According to FBI reports, crime is down 7 percent. We are experiencing a slight downturn in murders and aggravated assaults, bringing us back to the crime rates of about 1990. But that is far from the full story. To gain a useful perspective on violent crime-among both youth and adults-the view must cover a long enough time period to clearly identify a trend. (p.11) According to a report released last week, too late for Grossman to reference it in his book, the number of violent crimes is still falling. I do not understand how he can nonchalantly dismiss a five-year drop because it is too short, then continue to speak as if crime is actually on the rise. He later goes on to characterize violent movies and games as the heart of the problem: We have no problem letting our children go out and see — or stay home and watch — “slasher” films, a genre of movie that is aimed at the youth market. We have gone from the benign Pong video game in the 1970s to games in the 1990s that act more as murder simulators and permit youth to mimic the actual experience of killing.” (p. 22) Read this and you might think that every game on the market is a gory shooter. In fact, of the top 10 games of 1999, all ten games were rated “E” by the Entertainment Software Rating Board, meaning they are suitable for players of all ages. The games on this list include five Pokemon games, one racing game, two adventure games, and one very cartoony fighting game. In fact, only 7 percent of the games on the market today have an “M” rating, signifying that they are only suitable for mature players.

THE MILITARY CONNECTION As a former teacher at West Point and a consultant to law-enforcement agencies across the country, Grossman should be in his element when he discusses the use of simulators by police and the military, but even here his facts seem questionable. I interviewed the Lt. Colonel earlier this year and we discussed the simulators used by law enforcement agencies and the military. He said that FATS (Fire Arms Training Simulation) and MACS were used to desensitize soldiers and policemen so that they would more readily fire their guns in combat. When I asked retired Col. Ron Krisak, who ran the training and training technology battle labs at Fort Dix from 1995-1997 about this, he said that these simulations had nothing to do with desensitizing recruits. “The main idea behind simulations, video games, and modeling simulations in the military services is to hone battlefield skills. It has nothing to do with desensitizing soldiers. It trains them on how to be more effective.” Grossman makes a fine point when he states that it does not make sense to expose young children to ultra-violent entertainment. It’s sad that he doesn’t stop there, because the rest of his arguments detract from his message.