R-rated Video Games

Media Violence and Sexualisation of Youth

By Most Rev. Julian Porteous
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
27/2/2008

The causes of violence and crime in society are very complex. We need not add to this problem by introducing video games that numb our natural repulsion to violence and, with regard to sexually explicit games, reduce women in particular to mere objects of instant, self gratification.

We know from psychological research that exposure to violent video games can desensitise people to real-life violence. For instance, The Effects of Video Game Violence on Physiological Desensitization to Real-Life Violence, by Iowa State University Psychologist Nicholas Carnagey, Distinguished Professor of Psychology Craig Anderson and Professor Brad Bushman, shows “that exposure to violent video games increases aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, physiological arousal and aggressive behaviours, and decreases helpful behaviours” (Science Daily, 27 July 2006).

Furthermore, a University of California study on the Effects of Media Violence on Health-Related Outcomes Among Young Men by Dr Sonya Brady, reveals that violent video games create more permissive attitudes toward risky behaviours, such drug use, in young people who play such games. Dr Brady’s study not only reconfirms associations between real-world violence and risky behaviour, her experiments show a direct cause and effect between exposure to violence and attitudes toward risky behaviour (UCSF Today, September 2006). Video game violence can change a person’s attitudes in the real world.

Professor Anderson remarks that “older children consume increasingly threatening and realistic violence, but the increases are gradual and always in a way that is fun.” He summarises, “In short, the modern entertainment media landscape could accurately be described as an effective systematic violence desensitization tool. Whether modern societies want this to continue is largely a public policy question, not an exclusively scientific one.”

Carnagey adds that “several features of violent video games suggest that they may have even more pronounced effects on users than violent TV programs and films.”

Intuitively we already knew this long ago. Even our own Australian Institute of Criminology’s 1996 report, The Portrayal of Violence in the Media: Impacts & Implications for Policy, stated that “numerous research studies identify an association between exposure to violence in entertainment and violent behaviour,” and while not proving that exposure causes violent behaviour, “there is a risk that exposure to media violence will increase the likelihood of subsequent aggressive behaviour.”  Video games with explicit sexual content are also at issue here.

We are aware of the risks and the risks are increasing, the heat is being turned up gradually, as The Hon. Greg Donnelly MLC observed with regards to the sexualisation of our young people by the media ("Just sick of sexploitation", Herald Sun, 6 December, 2007).

While praising the media as an effective instrument of unity and understanding, the Pontifical Council for Social Communication has stated, “The legitimate rights to free expression and free exchange of information must be respected, but so must the rights of individuals, families and society itself to privacy, public decency and the protection of basic values. ... Even so called “soft core” pornography can have a progressively desensitizing effect, gradually rendering individuals morally numb and personally insensitive to the rights and dignity of others ... anti-social behaviour can grow as this process continues” (Pornography and Violence in the Communications Media: A Pastoral Response, 1989).

The old adage, you are what you eat, also applies to what we see. The way we view situations and other people, that is our attitudes, which include our attitudes towards responsible actions and relationships, have a positive or negative effect in our lives. And we have known this for millennia: “If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light; but if it is not healthy, your body is full of darkness,” to quote Jesus (Luke 11:34).

Desensitisation to violence or the sexualisation of our young people by the media does not promote the dignity of the human person and, as such, is not in our best interests as individuals nor as a society.