The shooter in Newtown, CT was said to be a gamer;
spending time with the electronic games where the hunter became the winner by
having the highest number of hits. I attended
a school program the other night where young children performed with classmates
in the Christmas program. I sat behind parents
who had a child in the program. The man
sat through the entire program with his phone playing a game. At one point the woman took the phone from
him and snapped a few pictures of the children on stage. When the phone returned, he promptly
restarted his game and continued to play until the kid's program was completed.
Electronic games are like that. Even when it does not desensitize the person
with its content, it does seem to grab the person's attention to an almost
addictive state. Children have been
playing the games on the market that have evolved into content that must be
labeled. Content unfit for anyone,
including a mature adult. After many
hours of play, during required times of placing the game aside, children have
reported they continue to think about the game and their scores and how they
could "reach the next level."
That thought rumination competes directly with the "down time"
activities where cognitive attention is required; it does affect memory and
retention of learned material. It
pre-empts attempted learning of new skills and tends to shorten attention span
and concentration.
Of course there are millions of children who have
excellent cognitive skills and can overcome the effects of the constant barrage
of more graphic games that help shape values toward more violence. On the other hand, there are some children
who tend to perseverate the material learned in those games and are unable to
overcompensate and over-learn incompatible, appropriate material to replace the
effects of the material internalized through repeated exposure to those
games. At this point in the games-crazed
learning curve in our society, we just don't have enough empirical information
to determine what, if any, more appropriate societal information is supplanted
in the mind of the child at the expense of learning the more inappropriate
material found in most of the action games.
Nor do we have enough information to determine which children can
differentiate with appropriate decisions with actions that would counteract the
effects of the conditioning of the violent material learned from the games.
There is no question electronic games do have an effect
on the child's learning, thinking and actions, but it continues to be uncertain
about which children will act on those vicariously learned actions seen in the
games and which ones know the difference between non-reality and reality. As a parent, we may think we have provided a
sound reasoning as to how the effects of hours of playing the games can be
turned or blunted: We may have provided
a stable, Christian home with competing, more appropriate attitudes and values
counteracting the content contained in the games themselves. But are we sure the images inside our child's
mind remain imaginary or are becoming real.
It is not my intent to make a sweeping generalization,
but what we allow our children to spend their time with, especially hours of
electronic games, is "Springtime and Harvest" and a reality experienced
by us as a natural cycle of life. We
"reap what we sew" and it is always a process that is painstakingly
slow. Not every parent who works
diligently to raise their child in the ways of right will always have the same
results. We know that competing factors
reside in the heart of a child and there is always a chance for rebellion.
Mostly, however, when children are socialized within
the context of a nurturing, loving family where right and wrong are taught,
along with respect for others, the chances of rebellion are slightly possible,
but are exponentially greater that the child will return when he is older and will
not depart from his early nurturing and training. Further, his departure will not be to the
extent it takes him to the depths of evil, but just to the brink of a searing
conscience that is undergirded with the loving principles of a sound,
consistent family life. At that point he
will return to embrace his sense of right as his own instead of those borrowed
from his parents.
Committees, councils, Commissions and study groups at
the highest levels will re-hash this issue of evil acted out at Newtown, CT. But if they only looked at thousands of
testimonies from families that took the time to "train up their child in
the way they should go" those Commission members would find the answer
right in front of their faces. Banning guns
will not be the total answer.
