The Problem With Matt Walsh’s Argument About Gaming

While the radical left is clearly the biggest threat to gaming, they’re not the only ones who could have a potentially negative impact on it.

Last week, Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh released a video where he stated that video games are at least partially responsible for desensitizing children to violence.

“It’s not good for kids to spend an exorbitant amount of time-consuming graphically violent
content,” Walsh said. Sure, I feel like spending an exorbitant amount of time doing
any one thing is always going to be an issue. But then he continued on, and this is where I think he made a mistake.

Walsh said, “Even if the content is fictional and virtual and imaginary. It doesn’t mean it has no influence just because it’s fictional. Among other things, it can have the effect of desensitizing the mind and soul to violence.”

While I have a deep respect for Walsh, and I can completely understand where he’s coming from, he’s just wrong on this one. Now, granted, young children shouldn’t be playing uber-violent video games. Duh, a kindergartner shouldn’t be kicking demon ass in “Doom,” wait till they’re a bit older. But what Walsh is doing is taking an argument that has been made a thousand times before and repackaging it for the modern age: the idea that violent content, whether it’s books or TV shows or movies or now video games, causes people to become violent if they themselves contain violence.

Walsh certainly isn’t the