Page 26 - IFV September Issue 2024

Humour

CHILDREN, VIDEO GAMES AND

PSYCHOPATHS

BY JAMES CLARKE

survey by researchers at Aston
University, Birmingham,
f
A ound that children who
regularly play video games are
prepared to admit that the games lead
to them acting out the violent scenes.
Yet if children are seriously being
influenced by those funny little computer Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
figures that jerk and flutter across their
monitor screens, kicking dragons over
ramparts, dealing karate chops to flying,
man-eating tortoises, and chopping off off killer rats five times their size, using in seven gave up other hobbies to play
the heads of sword-wielding characters, only darning needles as swords. video games.
what on earth did explicit, gruesomely We were spellbound by stories about Nick Alexander, a video distributor,
violent “fairy stories” do to us - the over parents who, on the pretext of going to said the survey supported his belief
50s generation? cut wood, would lead their own children “that children’s attitudes to video games
The children of the pre-television days deeper and deeper into the dark woods are far more level-headed than some
would not go to sleep until they’d heard, and then abandoning them to the adults suggest”.
for the umpteenth time, how Hansel wolves and hobgoblins. On the other hand…
and Gretel were locked inside a cage by We loved to hear (as we hid under A recent study published in The
a blind and wicked witch. And how the the blankets) how big bad wolves were Journal of Child Psychology and
wicked witch was trying to fatten them axed to death by angry dads who then Psychiatry in America concluded that 98
up until they were, as we say today, hacked open their steaming stomachs percent of children under the age of 10
“oven-ready”. to retrieve dear old granny, presumably are dreadful little brats.
The witch would insist on feeling one all slimy with mucus but, according to A team of scientists observed 700
of the children’s fingers to see if they the picture, still wearing rimless glasses children while the children were
were growing fatter. As I recall it, the on the end of her nose. engaged in everyday activities and found
little girl – girls were always the smarter How did such horror stories affect us? that 684 were “remorseless sociopaths
sex – held out a stick and in this way I don’t believe they did. I don’t believe with little regard for anything other
played for time. these stories did anything at all to us. than their own egocentric interests and
The story stopped short only at Take me for instance. pleasures”. (To think, it took a bunch of
giving us the witch’s recipe for a kiddie OK, it is true I am terrified of the dark scientists to find that out!)
casserole. and of old ladies with hooked noses. And Grandmothers were “especially
My generation thrilled at the thought I am nervous of beanstalks higher than susceptible to the self- serving
of giants plummeting to their deaths my head. Yes, it’s true too, I suppose, that machinations of these little sociopaths”.
from the clouds while trying to climb I would never have walked into even Dr Leonard Mateo, a developmental
down sky-high bean stalks, or witches a small woodland with my parents - psychologist at the University of
being reduced to greasy little puddles especially if my dad was carrying an axe. Minnesota who headed the study, said
after having water thrown at them. But that’s perfectly normal, surely. most adults were completely unaware
We listened, salivating, at the thought Aston University’s video survey that they were being remorselessly
of evil old women giving beautiful girls showed that only three out of 10 exploited “to obtain something as
poisoned apples, and how children, children said video games were their insignificant as an ice cream cone or a
shrunk by magic formulas, had to fight favourite pastime. And only about one new toy.”

24 • Issue 9 2024 • The Villager