The same old song

IF THE opponents of video games are to be believed, the young 
are at risk from a "contagion" that is stealing their innocence 
and undermining their morality. It sounds terrifying, at least 
to anyone who does not actually play video games. Yet exactly 
the same accusations were made against other new forms of 
entertainment in the past. Critics of novels said they "poisoned 
the mind and corrupted the morals" of young readers; waltzing 
was condemned as a "fatal contagion" that encouraged 
promiscuity; rock'n'roll was said to turn young people into 
"devil worshippers"; comic books were thought to turn children 
into drug addicts and criminals. Why does the same old song keep 
on repeating itself?

"If we look historically we can see a cycle that plays itself 
out again and again," says Henry Jenkins, professor of 
comparative media studies at the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology. First, he says, young people adopt a new form of 
entertainment with which adults are unfamiliar. "Parents are 
spooked by that," he says, since there is no handed-down advice 
about how they should respond. The result is a moral panic, very 
often triggered by a tragedy that is blamed on the new medium. 
But eventually the young grow up, and what once caused outrage 
becomes widely accepted. Then their own children adopt a new 
form of entertainment, and the whole cycle starts again.

When today's opponents of video games (such as Hillary Clinton) 
were growing up, rock'n'roll was in the firing line -- but it is 
now regarded with nostalgia. "Something starts out edgy, and 
then over time, conservative and corporate forces tend to take 
ownership of it and dilute it of its rebellious qualities," says 
Dmitri Williams, a researcher at University of Illinois at 
Urbana-Champaign. "That in turn creates a vacuum for the next 
thing, and on it goes."

History's lesson, then, is that the fuss over video games will 
pass, and that they will come to be seen as no more harmful than 
novels or waltzing. "We see generational shifts, and this is 
just another one of them," says Williams. But it will take time. 
Baby boomers will not change their minds, but will simply grow 
old and be replaced in positions of power and authority by a 
younger generation that is used to games. "They will be less 
alarmed by those media they grew up with," says Williams. "But 
inevitably there will be some newfangled thing that will alarm 
them, while it delights their children."

What will it be? "Holograms, or something," suggests Williams. 
Edward Castronova, a researcher at Indiana University and the 
author of "Synthetic Worlds", suggests another candidate: 
immersive multiplayer online games. Already, some players spend 
dozens of hours each week playing such games, and regard the 
virtual game world as their true place of residence -- the real 
world is simply where they eat and sleep. Eventually, technology 
may allow players to move into the virtual world permanently. 
"The hysteria over video games will pass," says Castronova, "but 
the furore over people permanently exiting the real world and 
entering a virtual world with other people, in effect a parallel 
society, that's a different fight, a bigger thing."

NOVELS
"Without the poison instilled [by novels] into the blood, 
females in ordinary life would never have been so much the 
slaves of vice... It is no uncommon thing for a young lady who 
has attended her dearest friend to the altar, a few months after 
a marriage which perhaps, but for her, had been a happy one, to 
fix her affections on her friend's husband, and by artful 
blandishments allure him to herself. Be not staggered, moral 
reader, at the recital! Such serpents are really in existence." 
- "Novel Reading, a Cause of Female Depravity", a pamphlet 
published in 1802
"Novels not only pollute the imaginations of young women... 
[they give them] false ideas of life, which too often make them 
act improperly." -- Weekly Magazine, 1798
"The free access which many young people have to romances novels 
and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many 
a promising youth; and prevented others from improving their 
minds in useful knowledge. Parents take care to feed their 
children with wholesome diet; and yet how unconcerned about the 
provision for the mind, whether they are furnished with salutary 
food, or with trash, chaff or poison?" -- Reverend Enos 
Hitchcock, 1790
(Source: Cathy Davidson, "Revolution and the Word: The Rise of 
the Novel in America")

THE WALTZ
"We remarked with pain that the indecent foreign dance called 
the Waltz was introduced (we believe for the first time) at the 
English court on Friday last Š it is quite sufficient to cast 
one's eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs, and 
close compressure of the bodies, in this dance, to see that it 
is far indeed removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto 
been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this 
obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we 
did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is 
attempted to be forced on the respectable classes of society by 
the evil example of their superiors, we feel it is a duty to 
warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a 
contagion." -- The Times of London, 1816
(Source: The Times, 16th July 1816)

THE MOVIE THEATER
"This new form of entertainment has gone far to blast 
maidenhood. Š Depraved adults with candies and pennies beguile 
children with the inevitable result. The Society has prosecuted 
many for leading girls astray through these picture shows, but 
God alone knows how many are leading dissolute lives begun at 
the Œmoving pictures.ı" -- The Annual Report of The New York 
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 1909
"It is an evil pure and simple, destructive of social 
interchange, and of artistic effect. Must moving picture shows 
be given in a dark auditorium, with all the lack of social 
spirit and the tendency to careless conduct that a dark 
auditorium leads to?" -- John Collier, "The Problem of Motion 
Pictures", 1910
(Sources: American Heritage, November 1993; Daniel Czitrom, 
"Media and the American Mind: From Morse to McLuhan")

THE TELEPHONE
"Does the telephone make men more active or more lazy? Does it 
break up home life and the old practice of visiting friends?" -- 
A survey conducted by the Knights of Columbus adult-education 
committee, San Francisco Bay Area, 1926
(Source: Claude Fischer, "America Calling: A Social History of 
the Telephone to 1940")

ROCK'N'ROLL
"The effect of rock and roll on young people, is to turn them 
into devil worshippers; to stimulate self expression through 
sex; to provoke lawlessness; impair nervous stability and 
destroy the sanctity of marriage. It is an evil influence on the 
youth of our country." -- Minister Albert Carter, 1956
(Source: Gary Herman, "Rock 'n Roll Babylon")

COMIC BOOKS
"This chronic stimulation, temptation and seduction by comic 
books... are contributing factors to many children's 
maladjustment. Many adults think that the crimes described in 
comic books are so far removed from the child's life that for 
children they are merely something imaginative or fantastic. But 
we have found this to be a great error. Comic books and life are 
connected. A bank robbery is easily translated into the rifling 
of a candy store. Delinquencies formerly restricted to adults 
are increasingly committed by young people and children... All 
child drug addicts, and all children drawn into the narcotics 
traffic as messengers, with whom we have had contact, were 
inveterate comic-book readers... This kind of thing is not good 
mental nourishment for children!" -- Fredric Wertham, 1954
(Source: Fredric Wertham,  "Seduction of the Innocent")

VIDEO GAMES
"The disturbing material in Grand Theft Auto and other games 
like it is stealing the innocence of our children and itıs 
making the difficult job of being a parent even harder." -- 
Hilary Clinton, 2005
"You know, if you hear that there is a child with an infectious 
disease in your school, you're going to be worried and you might 
not send your child to school and you're going to call and make 
sure that this child with the infectious disease has been 
properly treated and can't be contagious. Well in effect, if you 
think of this from a public health perspective, you know, what 
we are doing today, exposing our children to so much of this 
unchecked media, is a kind of contagion. We are conducting an 
experiment on this generation of children and we have no idea 
what the outcomes are going to be... this is a silent epidemic." 
-- Senator Hillary Clinton, 2005
"Little Johnny should be learning how to read, not how to kill 
cops." -- Senator Charles Schumer, 2005
(Sources: clinton.senate.gov; schumer.senate.gov)