Stardate 20010830.0824 (On Screen): A teenager doesn't know who he is. He's been what his parents wanted him to be until that point, and it's coming to be time to try to figure out what's really inside. So a guy that age tries on faces. He experiments with different ways of being to see what feels comfortable. Sometimes he acts like his friends, or like a celebrity he admires, or like a character in a film, or like some sub-culture. And in five or ten years, after trying on a number of faces, he'll figure out what he really is and will settle down. This is completely normal and healthy. Of course, it's an exercise in fantasy; and some of the faces may be unpleasant. It doesn't mean the kid is confused or evil, just that he's wide-ranging and curious. Rarely do these kinds of faces stick.
Action movies show us people being violent. A kid sees that and wonders "What would that be like?" Of course, doing that in real life would be horrible and despite what some believe it is rare for kids that age to actually become killers. But in the online world of computer games, they can pretend to be Neo or Arnold and can vicariously find out what it feels like without actually harming anyone or suffering any consequences. It's a perfect outlet for the natural curiosity that kids feel about things like that. It isn't that these things inspire those thoughts, for those thoughts are there already. One of the things a teenage guy is dealing with is a rush of hormones, especially testosterone. Testosterone makes someone aggressive, and kids that age begin to feel rage when they get pushed around. They feel like fighting back. That, too, is normal and part of growing up for a man is to learn to master those feelings and to control them. We all feel them, but few of us actually let loose and beat the crap out of some bastard who really deserves it.
It's hardly surprising that when games allow mods that kids that age will use that capability to make the game closer to the fantasy they want to experience. Sometimes that will mean decreasing the visible violence, but when that happens no-one notices. Equally, sometimes it will mean increasing the violence and then adults seem to freak. "The games are training our kids to become cold-blooded killers!" Nonsense. If anything, it's exactly the opposite: those games permit the kids to get those urges (which all of us feel at one time or another) out of their systems. Over the course of the last ten years, as video games have become more realistic, school violence has decreased. That doesn't prove causation, but it certainly suggests that the games are not making violence more common. (discussion in progress)
