Only gift Santa wants is violence-free stores

By STEVE BUIST

The Spectator (Tuesday December 21, 1999)

Santa Claus is a pacifist at heart. That's the message the jolly old man will be delivering today to toy stores in the area.

Santa will be at Hamilton City Hall to ask stores to declare themselves violence-free zones and remove all violent toys and games from their shelves. He will then take his appeal directly to some toy stores.

With the growing accessibility of computers, the landscape has changed in the past decade. War toys are being surpassed by video games that can offer a shocking range of graphic violence.

"The actual visual brutality of some of the video games has become much greater," said Dr. Joanna Santa Barbara, a child psychiatrist who will be one of Santa's helpers. The event is being sponsored by Hamilton Action for Social Change.

"There are games now that involve severing heads, pulling out spinal columns; and many games that involve killing," added Santa Barbara.

Some experts fear these games-- especially given the active involvement required of the player-- can teach kids to channel their anger through violence. And there's some evidence to back them up.

Studies have shown that there can be a 50 per cent increase in aggressive play between children after they have been playing with violent toys.

"There are many studies that show this has a desensitizing effect on children and that the effect can last for a long time," added Santa Barbara.

In recently released videotapes, the teens who shot dead 12 students and teachers at their Colorado high school mention the violent computer game Doom.

This month, a judge in Sao Paulo, Brazil, banned six video games after a medical student, inspired by the game Duke Nukem, opened fire on a packed movie theatre and killed three people.

A recent U.S. study showed that game-playing among children peaks between the ages of eight and 13.

Boys make up the majority of players, and they tend to gravitate toward action games in which they are first-person shooters. In one survey, 50 per cent of boys listed violent games as their favourites.

The most recent development for video games in called "skins," in which players can insert images of real people and places, making the game more realistic.