Rageometer:  (3/5)

While perusing Tom’s Hardware, I came across this oddly titled article.  I mean, let’s face it, if you come across a news reporte entitled “Games Blamed in Return of Victorian Era Disease” you simply MUST take a look, right?  The long and short of the article is that Rickets is on the rise in Great Britain.  This disease is caused by a lack of vitamin D, and vitamin D is most easily obtained by just going outside and standing in the sunlight.  That’s right, the sun makes your body produce this particular supplement.  The reason for this deficiency, according to British scientists?  Video games.  That’s right, they’re blaming one of our favorite past times for people not going outside any more. 

The utter stupidity of this assertion is stunning.  In law, there is a term called Proximate Cause.  I used to work in insurance, so this term came up from time to time.   The proximate cause of an injury is one which is sufficiently related to an injury that it can be considered the root cause.  So, if your house burns down, the fire is the cause, but that load of gasoline-soaked rags you left next to propane heater with the pilot light would be the proximate cause.    In short, if you’re an idiot and it comes back to bite you, it’s your fault.  Foreseeability is the element that is generally used in insurance.  This means that if an outcome can be reasonably predicted (an admittably nebulous legal term), then that cause is the proximate one.  In the case of video games being responsible for Ricketts, that would indeed be the direct cause.  However, I would argue that it is not the proximate cause.  Since allowing a child to stay indoors all day staring at a TV screen (either for video games or regular programming) is clearly bad for them in the first place, the parents actions (or lack thereof) are the real culprits here. 

And how do these “scientists” and “doctors” suggest we fix the problem?  Not by advocating that parents boot their kids out the door and force them to play outside (which might also help alleviate childhood obesity and all of its associated problems).  No, instead, the state should mandate that the vitamin be added to certain foods.  Excuse me, Dr. Douchebag, but wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to just tell the kids to go kick a soccer ball for an hour a day?  How about, instead of nannying parents and their kids to death, we cause a little social change back toward personal responsibility (which in the case of parents includes taking care of their kids, whom they made).

This is the same issue that comes up when some 14 year old does something he saw in Grand Theft Auto.  The game gets blamed, but who  bought their teen (or in many cases, pre-teen) a game that’s rated for ages 17 and up?  Who didn’t instill in their child that this is fantasy and completely not acceptable in real society?  Someone needs to be held accountable.  You don’t let a 13 year old go to an MC-17 movie, and most retail stores won’t sell M-rated video games to minors without their parents present.  I worked a holiday season at Circuit City back in 2005, and I can vouch for their policy of checking IDs and prohibiting the sale of such games to anyone 16 or younger.  No ID, no game.  So how do kids get these games when they’re too young to really be able to understand them?  Because their parents are jackasses that don’t know how to raise a child, that’s why.  I remember when I was a kid and Mortal Kombat came out.  I wasn’t allowed to play it.  I played it at a friend’s house as a result, in secret, behind my mother’s back.  Look, kids will always figure out a way to get around the rules parents set for them, but that’s part of being a kid.  Parents at least need to make the kids work for it.  It builds character.

I was a game junky from the get-go, playing on my NES and even an old Atari, but I never suffered from a Vitamin D deficiency because my parents threatened to take the games away if I didn’t spend at least some time outside.  Ricketts isn’t being cause by games.  It’s being caused by bad parenting.  Society should take some responsibility for a change.