Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

4.28.10 | The Supreme Court agreed this week to rule on the constitutionality of a California law that outlaws the sale of violent video games to children.

The New York Times’ Adam Liptak explains further:

Lower courts have consistently struck down similar laws under the First Amendment, declining to extend obscenity principles to images of violence. The Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case in the absence of disagreements in the lower courts suggests that at least some justices might be prepared to rethink how the First Amendment applies to depictions of violence, at least when they are sold to children.

The 2005 California law at issue in the case imposes $1,000 fines on stores that sell violent video games to people under 18. The law defines violent games as those “in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being” in a way that is “patently offensive,” appeals to minors’ “deviant or morbid interests” and lacks “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”

In striking down the law, justices from the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit were not convinced by the state of California’s evidence that violent video games caused psychological harm to young players. Justices found that this argument was “supported mainly by evidence based on correlation rather than causation,” and that the examples of violence presented did not “include any context or possible story line,” according to Liptak.

[Watch Katynka Martinez discuss how Latino and African-American youth are critiquing and retelling stories of themselves and their communities depicted in some of these violent video games].

Liptak continues:

“Michael D. Gallagher, the president of the Entertainment Software Association, said First Amendment protections should apply to video games just as they do to books, films and music. Industry self-regulation is working, he said, and it is harder for minors to buy M-rated games than it is to buy R-rated DVDs.”

You can read the full New York Times article here.

Plus: Don’t like the video games available on the mainstream market? Lots of opportunities are popping up this summer for kids to learn how to create their own.

New York based Global Kids is running a week-long game design boot camp for high school students. Kids will have the chance to create games online and off, work on their own or with peers, and meet professional game designers.

Additionally, over at Interactive Multimedia Technology, Lynn Marentette notes that there are gaming opportunities for kids on the newly improved Game Creator Central website, sponsored by the Cartoon Network.

“Although some teachers might frown upon cartoon-related content,” Marentette writes, “creating games is a learning process and can help young people become more interested in ‘STEM’-related studies and careers. (STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math)”