The Next Sound You Hear, the Next Sight You See

Yes. It has happened. Yesterday, by a margin of 7 to 2, Justices of the US Supreme Court ruled that violent video games are considered protected speech. The case in question, Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association, was based on a California law also known by the dry title of Civil Code 1746–1746.5, signed in 2005, prohibiting sale of violent video games to minors, and imposing fines of up to $1,000 for violators.

Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association, filed by the state of California, posed these questions: Does the First Amendment bar a state from restricting the sale of violent video games to minors? Can a state ban the sale of violent video games to minors, and if so, must the state prove that violent video games directly cause physical and psychological harm to minors for the ban to be constitutional?

The state defined “violent video game” as one which the range of options available to a player include killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being. The game displays acts that a reasonable person would find appeal to minors with deviant or morbid interests, and is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the community as to what is suitable for minors. The game lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors, and enables the player to virtually inflict serious injury upon images of human beings or characters with substantially human characteristics in a manner which is especially heinous, cruel or depraved. The game involves torture or serious physical abuse to the victim by gratuitous violence beyond that necessary to commit the killing, needless mutilation of the victim’s body, and helplessness of the victim.

Before the bill was even signed into law, the Entertainment Merchants Association and the Entertainment Software Association filed suit in court, citing the law’s unconstitutionality. In making its appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court, the state’s interest was to prevent violent, aggressive and antisocial behavior and psychological or neurological harm to minors who play violent video games, and cited as precedent the 1968 Supreme Court Case of Ginsberg v. New York. This was a case in which the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled that in matters of obscenity, the state can and should protect minors. In the Schwarzenegger case, the Supreme Court ruled against the state and concurred with the decision of lower courts. Their decision was based on the premise that video games, regardless of their violent content, are entertainment, which is protected by the First Amendment. Therefore, sexual and violent content are to be viewed differently. Violent content is free speech. Sexual content is not.

In its reasoning, the court also cited that America has a long tradition of limiting depictions of sexual acts, but has never been as restrictive about violence. The court also noted that as new technologies are invented, states cannot target them for restriction because of concern about the potential influence on children. The interactive nature of video games was equated to the effect of a compelling book, and the scientific findings on the effect of violent video games on children doesn’t support censorship.

The court’s ruling dismisses current and previous research that violent video games pose a threat to children, suggesting that the research doesn’t prove these games cause children to act aggressively. The ruling also leaves unanswered questions about our double standards regarding sex and violence, particularly when it comes to laws protecting children from ‘harm’.  Coming in on the heels of a congressman who lost his job because he did not pay heed to the impact his sexual Twitter feed had on the web, shows that in this Information Age, we continue to wade blindly into interesting and uncharted territory, making decisions based on an incomplete knowledge of the medium in question.

The effect of new media, including on-line gaming, Twitter feeds and social networking, is a subject worth our consideration, principally because of our interactivity. The power of virtual images, virtual communications and the effects they have on us as consumers are still to be studied for their social and psychological effect. As for violent images before young people, opinions are mixed. There is still not enough known. Yet there are historic precedents cited in the Supreme Court and elsewhere that showed today’s level of concern over violent internet games was similarly experienced in the early 20th century with the advent of the telephone and its potential intrusion on individual privacy. But are these two forms of technology the same?

In an article written in 2009 by developmental psychologist Douglas A. Gentile called “Video Games Affect the Brain — for Better and Worse” the author, who monitors the effect of new media on children, found that in continuing play with violent video games, young people become desensitized to violence. There is a dopamine ‘reward’ to the male brain which is also tied to feelings of motivation and ‘winning’.  Our brains suppress emotional responses when we perpetrate violence on the ‘villains’ in our video games.

I am personally not against video games as a whole. There are many games out there which are actually good for young people, promote social and perception skills, teamwork and cooperation, and are actually fun, and there is a rating system still in effect for video games in California similar to the motion picture ratings determining the level of viewing appropriate by children, young people and adults. So parents still have guidance in purchasing video games for their kids.

Doesn’t this all seem fitting subject matter for the heavy basket of issues that is Pluto in Capricorn? In our short existence as a nation, America has had a long history with violence. With this history, easy access to guns and weaponry, and our society always on the edge of exploding with violence, violence is a primary expression of our culture. It’s our tradition; a founding principle. Our evolution out of that violence is slowed longer still by our need to use and carry arms, and today our violent impulses, even the virtual ones, have sanction in the halls of Congress, the Constitution and the Supreme Court.

Maybe we owe it to ourselves to monitor and observe the traditions and standards used by our government to determine what is harmful, violent and obscene. Are we ready to take a deeper look? Will the next sound you hear, the next sight you see — a naked penis on your Blackberry or a virtual decapitation on your XBox — be too much for you or your child to handle? Would you trust the Supreme Court, or for that matter any government, to determine whether it is or not?