A 2004 study by the Entertainment Software Association found a an increase in online gaming, with 43% of gamers playing online an hour or more each week. In an era of the Sony PlayStation and X-Box 360 the popularity of video games and digital online games remains strong. Our children go online with our approval and play such games as World of Warcraft, Quake and Second Life Virtual Reality.  These games/environments are  also conduits for the exchange of hate speech.

There has been a proliferation of gamers in addition to exchanging gunshots and laser ray gun blasts, trading racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic rhetoric.   The problem like the Internet in general is the anonymity covering the gamers making it easy to engage in hate speech with anonymity and impunity.  The problem with policing an X-Boy type community of 23 million members and 1-2 million users online at any one time are obvious.  Like the social networking sites Facebook, YouTube and MySpace, the community for the most part is forced to police itself with regards to hate speech and other offensive content. The moderators who take down offensive content are for the most part unaware of that content unless a user flags it.  This is the standard in the social networking community. It addition to being the most practical way to monitor hate speech from a business model standpoint it also protects the immunity given Social Networking Sites and gaming sites under Section 230 of The Communications Decency Act.  One might ask whether a gaming population that young be relied on to police itself?  The average user is older than you think. A survey compiled by the Entertainment Software Association and released at E3, the video game industry’s major trade show in Los Angeles, found that a slight majority of video game players are now over 18 years of age. The average age of game players was 29 and the average age of buyers was 36, with men making up 59% of the playing audience.   At this age, it takes the parents out of the equation although as with any type of hate speech it starts at home.  This is also true with standard online digital computer games. What if they were playing games such as Border Patrol where the goal is to kill Hispanics Adults and children crossing the border,

According to the Anti-Defamation League, Hate groups are increasingly using racist and anti-Semitic computer games to recruit young people These games cover a wide variety of racism, anti-Semitism and bigotry targeting Hispanics, Jews, Gays and Blacks to name a few.  Here is one called Ethnic Cleansing where the user is defending “The White Race”.

While gaming networks are taking steps to combat online hate speech, the battle still begins at home.  Ask your children what games they are playing. Take a look.  If they are standard games you would normally see on an X-Box ask  your children if offensive language  is being used.  If they are the ones using it the answer is going to be no but you still have to ask.   How can you tell if it is your child practicing intolerance online?  How can you tell if your child is racist or trending towards that mode of thinking?  It’s not a comfortable topic.  Most parents want their children to grow up color-blind or blind religious and ethnic stereotypes, unfortunately many conclude that they easiest way to do this is to not broach the subject with them.  Unfortunately the structured environments of the living room and kitchen a not the world our children live in. They are constantly exposed to racial stereotypes and trickle down media exposure from other children as well as teachers.  That is the world they live in.

A 2006 Study by Birgitte Vittrup of the Children’s Research Lab at the University of Texas highlighted these issues. Vittrup’s study wanted to learn if typical children’s videos with multicultural storylines have any beneficial effect on children’s racial attitudes.  A disturbing effect of the study was that some parents simply dropped out because they did not want to discuss race with their children.

“We might imagine we’re creating color-blind environments for children, but differences in skin color or hair or weight are like differences in gender—they’re plainly visible. Even if no teacher or parent mentions race, kids will use skin color on their own, the same way they use T-shirt colors. Bigler contends that children extend their shared appearances much further—believing that those who look similar to them enjoy the same things they do.  Anything a child doesn’t like thus belongs to those who look the least similar to him.”[1]

You are not going to be able to monitor what your child does or says 24 hours a day nor should you but digital gaming going on under your roof is fair game to inquire  what your child is exposed to in the gaming community and what his/her reaction is to it. Start tonight.

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[1] See Bab’s Discriminate Newsweek Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman | NEWSWEEK

Published Sep 5, 2009  From the magazine issue dated Sep 14, 2009