President Trump Responds to Florida Shooting: Violent Video Games "Shape Young People's Thoughts"

A week after the tragic school shooting in Florida, politicians, legislators, and public figures [...]

By Matthew Hayes

A week after the tragic school shooting in Florida, politicians, legislators, and public figures are discussing what can, and should, be done to prevent things like this from happening in the future. In addition to the heated debate about gun laws, video games have once again been pushed into the spotlight. During a recent meeting to address school safety, President Trump suggested that something needs to be done about violence that young people see in video games. See the clip for yourself here:

"I'm hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people's thoughts," the President said. The buck didn't stop with video games, however. The President went on to address violence in media generally, saying, "And then you go the further step, and that's the movies. You see these movies, they're so violent, and yet a kid is able to see the movie if sex isn't involved. But killing is involved, and maybe they have to put a rating system for that... You get into a whole complicated, a very big deal."

Of course, on many levels, he's right. Nothing the President said here was sensationalized or out of context. The fact of the matter is that video games rated for mature audiences due to their violence do find their way into the hands of young kids, and it happens all of the time. Is there something that needs to be changed about the way we rate these games, or does something need to change about the way they're sold?

When I was a kid, I had no issues getting M-rated games for myself if I had the money. Of course, at that time, 16-bit and 32-bit graphics were state of the art, and the depictions of violence weren't realistic. Things are different now. We now have games like Grand Theft Auto V that, with a couple of mods, can appear photorealistic, and we all know how widespread violence and even brutality can be in Grand Theft Auto.

Games are also more addicting than they've ever been, and are often developed in order to trigger positive dopamine responses in the mind of the player in order to keep them coming back and spending money.

Is that part of the problem, and if so, what do we need to do about it? We all need to be thinking about these things, because the games we love so dearly are going to return as a topic of conversation every time something like this happens.

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