TEACHING
KIDS TO KILL

Topics: Killing; Murder; Teens; Temptation; Video Games; Violence

References: Exodus 20:13; Proverbs 3:31; 22:6; Matthew 6:22–23; 1 Corinthians 15:33; Philippians 4:8

David Grossman, a retired U.S. Army psychologist, believes that violent video games are teaching our kids to kill. Grossman first became aware of this issue while conducting research for his Pulitzer prize-nominated book On Killing, which tells about the army’s solution to the problem that as many as 85 percent of soldiers did not fire their weapons during World Wars I and II.

Grossman said, “Hardwired into the brains of most healthy members of most species is a response against killing their own kind.” To deal with the problem, the army desensitized soldiers by having them shoot at human-shaped targets made of wood. As technology improved, the military began using video games to simulate the killing of other human beings.

Grossman believes that modern video games like Doom and Grand Theft Auto have the same desensitizing effect on teens. David Walsh, director of the National Institute on Media and the Family, agrees: “What happens when a teen spends a lot of time playing violent video games is [that] the aggression center of the brain activates, but the emotional center of the brain deactivates—exactly the combination that we would not want to see.”

As an example, Grossman writes about Michael Carneal, of Paducah, Kentucky, who in 1997 opened fire in the lobby of his high school, seriously injuring five of his classmates and killing three others. A subsequent police investigation found that Michael’s parents had converted their two-car garage into a playroom lined with point-and-shoot arcade games. Years of playing violent video games had provided Michael with the emotional training needed to kill human beings.

Those video games also provided Michael with the physical training needed to use a deadly weapon. Prior to the night before his killing spree, he had never shot an actual pistol. However, when he opened fire on his fellow students, he did so with a surprising degree of accuracy. “I have trained the FBI. I have trained Navy SEALS, Green Berets, and Texas Rangers,” Grossman writes. “And when I tell them about this case, they’re simply stumped. Nowhere in the annals of law enforcement, military, or criminal history can we find an equivalent achievement.”

—Tom Neven, “Teaching Kids to Kill,” Plugged In (July 2006)