Children’s mind undermined by War games
– It is feared that war games will lead to strengthening egocentrism, bullying and school absenteeism and spreading Internet addiction. -
“It is apparent that games are very dangerous to children.”
It is apparent that games are very
dangerous. There is nothing to argue
about it. My opinion is that those who
cannot understand this level of subject unless they are provided every proof or
data are mentally ill. Some sorts of
drugs destroy children’s mind. I am very
surprised to learn that there are so many parents who easily give such
dangerous games to children. Parents
only have to give such games to children to have them play alone. If they abandon to confront their children in
person, however, they will get paid back for it soon.
I have never had our child watch dramas on TV
at home. Seeing movies is out of the
question. Pictures depict too much
violence. When he was in the ninth
grade, my son saw a movie “Harry Potter” for the first time on a bus during a
school excursion. Asked about how he liked,
he said: “I felt sick and uncomfortable.”
He also went to the Tokyo Disney Land and seemed to enjoy it very
much. Asked again about it when he came
home, he answered “It is a very interesting place. I think it is worth going once but I don’t
think I have to go there any longer.”
According to him, some classmates reaffirmed what a beautiful place they
were living in when they came back to Fukutomi.
In this sense, it might be instructive to see a big city like a drain
once. I think the children in Fukutomi
normally responded. I am afraid that once
the brain is damaged by games, children cannot make a proper decision.
Masatoshi
Takeshita
December
21, 2013
Children’s mind undermined by War games –
It is feared that war games will lead to strengthening egocentrism, bullying
and school absenteeism and spreading Internet addiction.
The Chosyu Shimbun dated November 6, 2013
Parents and teachers are concerned about the spread of “Internet addiction”
among junior and senior high school students, who are too obsessed by chats, LINE*
or online games by means of cell phones, smartphones, game machines or PCs to
have a talk with parents or help out with them.
These things have fanned self-centered thinking, in which the other is attacked
or eliminated in a virtual world beyond the reach of adults unless he/she is
controlled as they want.
*(Note) LINE – mail application for free
call
A father bought a smartphone for his daughter, a high school junior. According to him, she was obsessed by LINE
and unable to take her eyes off it out of fear that she
might be ostracized unless sending back.
Since she got paler and lost her appetite day by day, the father finally
grabbed the smartphone away from her. It
turned out that she had eventually made communication,
which cost 800,000 yen in a month.
Killing
each other in a real battlefield
Connection with the unknown
Another mother was worried about her junior
high school son. She found out that he
gradually changed in the expression of his eyes as well as in countenance, didn’t
smile and less frequently answered her though spoken to. Later she discovered that he had been
obsessed by a war game and stayed up until after midnight to play it. She knew the cause
and grabbed the game away from him.
She confessed that she had a hand-to-hand fight with him because she
tried to turn off power and grab it away from him. She criticized by saying “Cell phones sales
companies, game companies and LINE operation companies have accumulated profits
at the sacrifice of children. I think
there are many companies which have not fulfilled their responsibilities to the
society.”
There is one of video
games popular among junior and senior high school students and adults, “Call
of Duty.” This game is developed by an
American game company.
It is characterized
by depiction of battlefield seen from the viewpoint of a soldier. A child, a player, plays the game as if he
were a solider in battlefield.
Only a soldier cannot win the battle and has
to fight in cooperation with other allies.
In a word, the player kills the enemy with somebody connected on the
Internet, with whom he communicates. All ally soldiers appearing on the game
are given names and their names and ranks are confirmed by taking a sight on
them during a game.
In many works, a main character has to
plunge into a battlefield as a budding solder and fight in one place after
another in accordance with a story. The
player sees in front of his eyes vivid images as if in
a battlefield – when the player goes to a specific point, a group of
foes appear; bombers launch an air raid from the above; an enemy soldier who
lost one half of the body due to a bomb blast cries out, etc. And the self-pride of
a soldier, “to die without losing patriotism at the end” is depicted.
And the game is
structured in which with the progress of a game, the player has to buy a new right
and weapon. The
player actually has to pay money. A
certain adult says “I spent 100,000 yen to buy weapons.” IT companies make
money in this way.
A certain mother who saw
the game said: “Since goose-pump
real images are seen, just the thought of children playing such a game
makes me shiver. There are cases of murder committed as though it were a game. I think that this can happen to me, too.”
Parents
and teachers, let’s unite in launching a campaign to control games.
In the United States
during the past decade, the government has carried out
the national achievement test to rank students and schools on marks. They have recruited
low-performing students born to poverty to dispatch them to Iraq or
Afghanistan. They place an emphasis on
having young people accustomed to war games since childhood in order to train
them for killer soldiers.
In 2002 the United States
Army developed a series of video game to fight with terrorists “America’s Army”
at government expense.
The game can be downloaded for free with
registration of individual information such as name, address, etc. (more than
ten million people have registered) to utilize it as a
means to recruit prospective soldiers.
The U.S. has been criticized for indiscriminately
killing civilians in Pakistan and Yemen with drones. The company which
develops drones has changed the cockpit controller design into the same design
of the game machine. The purpose
of design change is to have the young soldier master the technique in a short
period of time and have them commit murder in cold
blood without guilty feeling by moving only fingers like dancing while
seeing the monitor screen.
The problem is that IT
companies, game companies and LINE operating companies are exploiting the young
to make profits, while the government/the
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology does not impose any
restrictions from an educational standpoint, allows them to prevail, and creates the young who will become cold-blooded killers,
intentionally as a policy.
It
is important for parents and teachers to develop critical ability against the
antisocial media for the proper growth of children as humans and the future of
peaceful Japan and to unite in launching a campaign against them. At the same time, it is important to have
children develop such pure spirituality that they never yield to such adverse
environment, have compassion for others and fight against anything wrong.
