"Murder" At My Wal-Mart Essay
I was walking through Wal-Mart, looking at the CDs, when I passed an older couple with their grandson. At first glance, they seemed like a friendly couple who took pleasure in their grandson's enjoyment of the video game he was playing. But as I passed them my thoughts quickly changed as I listened to what their four-year-old grandson was saying: "Murder! Murder! I murdered him! " It horrified me to hear a four-year-old scream about murder while his grandfather stood by with a big smile. What are the yletting him play? I wondered.
All the violent video games I knew began to filter through my mind. These thoughts were quickly stopped when, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the screen. The boy was playing a dirt bike racing game and was supposed to be trying to kill deer. Instead, he was trying to kill the rider by slamming him into the wall. This made me seriously wonder how much of a role video games play in violence today.
Don't get me wrong, Ilove video games. Some of my favorite childhood memories are of playing them with my cousins. Racing, wrestling, snowboarding - you name it, we probably played it. But in recent years games have become increasingly violent. I have no doubt that children who play violent video games when they are too young to understand the difference between right and wrong will want to go out and be just like the heroin that game. A four-year-old has no way to distinguish the difference between killing a bicycle rider in his game and killing a real person on the side of the road. Children should not be exposed to this kind of violence at such an early age - it influences them in ways that are more harmful than we can imagine.
As a society, we do nothing about what goes on around us on a daily basis. We let our children play these video games because it makes them happy. No one reacted to the four-year-old at Wal-Mart because he seemed so happy, despite the fact his screams could be heard all over the store. No employee asked him to be quiet and no customer complained - not even me. I guess I was too scared to complain, scared that it wasn't my place to say anything, and more scared of what our society has become.
