VIDEO VIOLENCE DEGRADING OUR CHILDREN

April 2010

APN Newsletter

Peter entered a popular Sydney department store with trepidation - he wanted to buy a video game which, by law, he's not supposed to have. Peter is 14 but aware he looks younger than his age. Not that the shop assistant cares. Ignoring the red ''Restricted'' warning sticker on the front of the game box, the assistant takes $100 from the boy without question. Peter walks out of the store with a violent game that the law says should only be bought by those older than 15 and accompanied by an adult or guardian.

''I'm shocked how easy it ended up being,'' Peter says later. With the permission of his parents, Peter conducted a video-game shopping survey around Sydney's CBD on behalf of a major newspaper. He visited six retailers, picked out games with an MA 15+ classification, then strolled up to the counter. Five out of six shops handed him graphic games involving murder, mass shootings, stabbings, drug dealing, sexual violence and child abductions. The results of the investigation outraged family lobby groups, who say not enough is being done to crack down on the practice.

Barbara Biggins, chief executive of the Australian Council on Children and the Media said. ''The shops are being derelict in their duties. If the respective state governments don't come down hard on this, what message does it send? What's the point if the enforcement end of the spectrum isn't working.'' Interactive Games and Entertainment Association chief executive Ron Curry agrees that obligations must be fulfilled at the point of sale - ''and, more widely, that everybody is educated about the rating system in place''.

''If you'd told me you'd been into six specialist games shops and they'd sold the games, I'd be very surprised,'' Mr Curry says. ''When it comes to mass merchants, there can be a high turnover of staff and employee moves between departments, and there is potentially a lack of continuity in terms of education and knowledge of what the classifications actually mean. That said, there is no excuse.''

Peter says he has mates his age who play the games he bought. ''Games like these are becoming more lifelike,'' he says. ''If you play this sort of stuff regularly, the violence, killing, drugs and everything, just becomes normal.''  Research suggests exposure to violent games makes people more aggressive and less caring regardless of their age, sex or culture. A review of 130 studies on the subject - covering more than 130,000 young gamers worldwide - found exposure to violent video games was a risk factor for increased aggression and decreased empathy.

Lead researcher Craig Anderson, from the Centre for the Study of Violence at Iowa State University, says such effects are neither huge nor trivial. ''If you have a child with no other risk factors for aggression and violence, and if you allow them to suddenly start playing video games five hours to 10 hours a week, they're not going to become a school shooter,'' he says. [But it's a risk factor that's easy for an individual parent to deal with - at least, easier than changing most other known risk factors for aggression and violence, such as poverty or one's genetic structure.''

Selling restricted games to minors is a criminal offence. Those selling MA15+ computer games to someone under the age of 15 face fines up to $11,000. Selling Refused Classification games to minors carries a maximum of two years' jail or fines up to $33,000.. "The government takes such breaches seriously and has given police full authority to enforce laws dealing with this offence,'' a spokeswoman for the Attorney-General says. A review of computer game classification laws is currently in progress as are development proposals to improve compliance by retailers."