President Donald Trump on Thursday articulated what many concerned parents over the years have thought: violent video games, TV shows, and movies are warping the minds of young children.
The president’s comments come on the heels of the deadly Florida high school shooting, which took the lives of 17 people and injured many more.
Trump, during a White House meeting on mass shootings, school violence, and gun safety, indicated that prevalent violence in today’s media entertainment could attribute to the disconnect people must apparently feel when deciding to take the lives of others.
“We have to look at the internet, because a lot of bad things are happening to young kids and young minds, and their minds are being formed, and we have to do something about maybe what they’re seeing and how they’re seeing it,” the president said. “And also video games.”
He added, “I’m hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts. And you go one further step and that’s the movies. You see these movies, and they’re so violent. A kid is able to see the movie if sex isn’t involved, but killing is involved, and maybe they have to put a rating system for that.”
While there are rating systems currently in place for film, television, and video games, this isn’t the first time Trump has pondered possible psychological effects of the onslaught of violence in various lanes of entertainment.
Trump in 2012 tweeted, “Video game violence & glorification must be stopped — it is creating monsters!”
CNN in 2016 reported that while these ratings systems are in place, television rating systems aren’t terribly accurate and of little help to parents, according to a study conducted for Pediatrics.
A 2015 study conducted for the U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, also reported findings of “an association between media violence exposure and physical aggression in children.”
Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz reportedly played violent video games for upwards of 15 hours per day, Cruz’s former neighbor told the Miami Herald.
The neighbor said that Cruz lost himself in video games to escape his “misery,” adding that the video games were “kill, kill, kill, blow up something, and kill some more, all day.”