Video Games, Cartoons

and the Youth of Today.

By Ashley Holland

Many people say that today's youth has been corrupted and desensitized. Personally, I believe this to be true, to an extent. There are still certain areas in life where today's children possess the naiveté and innocence of youth, though what remains is rapidly fading. There are some areas throughout life where children should live with that fading innocence.

Video games and television show violence and abuse, slowly eating away at innocence. Children unconsciously absorb that information, becoming apathetic to the horrors of life. Abuse of animals, first shown on a simple cartoon. An example of this: The Simpsons, or rather itchy and scratchy. Beating each other to a bloody pulp with a hammer, or worse. Switch the channel, the news: Main headline, puppy mills. Still fixated on the violence of itchy and scratchy, the pictures of starving pups and dogs do not phase us. We turn from the news of reality, back to that of deceptively humorous fiction.

Yes, it is easier to accept what we see as horrors in the world on television. What we see, and what is right in front of us, are two different realities, to most. With a flip of the switch, we can turn away from death and wars, to fake Hollywood dramas. The only difference, the comforting knowledge that what we see, is not the news channel, the blood that is splattered across the walls, and matter thicker than blood coating the ceiling, from the scull of an actor who has shot his own brains out, is made with corn starch, syrup, and food coloring.

Children become so callous, unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality. First person shooting games, like Delta Force or Unreal tournament, (extra points for a head shot) become the second reality, another home to the children who's actual homes have become unbearable.

We need to ask ourselves how we have let these homes go from the normalcy of white picket fences to what they are. How the parents, did not notice their loving child become a sociopath.

Though are the parents really to blame, buying these games for their children? Or the companies, Novalogic - the art of war, and Epic games, GT. Interactive Software, their logo's, and cases so proudly displaying quotes of "20 clicks behind enemy lines, Dropped in with only the equipment strapped to your body. You are the hunter. This is what you've trained for...what you live for...you are Delta Force.

Delta force was developed with the assistance of a former Delta Force Officer. I bet that officer is really proud. Would he be wondering if his knowledge helped develop that adolescent who shot up Columbine high school?

All this and we wonder why teens go to school with sawed-off shotguns and semi- automatic weapons? Life has become a game, the line between reality and fiction has become blurry, almost indistinguishable. Those children, with their video games and cartoons, and universally collected knowledge of carnage, have seen more spilt blood, and gore on their televisions, and computer screens than any war-time veteran.