Parents Need Help

To what degree does the responsibility for teaching good values to children fall solely on parents? (Lamm & Everett, "Chapter 19, Popular Culture," 2007).

Many people in society believe that the responsibility should be shared with the state. They believe when it comes to video games that children are allowed to buy, the state should have half responsibility. Many people believe that states should outlaw the sale of violent and sexual video games to children under the age of 18.

Parents in California support the California law that seeks to ban the sale or rental of violent games to children under the age of 18. The law, which was signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005, has been declared unconstitutional by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday about the federal court's decision to throw out California's ban on violent games. California's measure would have regulated games more like pornography than movies, prohibiting the sale or rental of games that give players the option of "killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being" to anyone under the age of 18. Retailers would be punished with fines of up to $1,000 for each infraction. The federal court said the law violated minors' constitutional rights under the First and Fourteenth amendments and the state lacked enough evidence to prove violent games cause physical and psychological harm to minors. (Lang, 2013).

For those who oppose the ban, they say that those that make video games have set a rating system on the video games by the appropriate age level so children are not able to buy violent or sexual video games on their own. If the children are playing them then it is the parent’s responsibility because the parents would have had to buy or rent the game for them.

Parents Need Help 3

In the state of Illinois the responsibility solely lies on the parents to teach good values in their children. The Courts of Illinois ruled the Safe Games Act, which limited the sale and rental of violent or sexually explicit computer or video games to minors, unconstitutional and too broad. Therefore, there are no limits on the kinds of games that children may buy or rent. In addition, you should keep in mind that your child may be free to play violent games without restriction in video arcades open to the public.

A ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 (Brown v. Entertainment