Sandra Paterson: More dangerous than a gentle smack

If you have kids around 7 or 8 who like to lean over their cornflakes and try out their reading skills on the newspaper, best you don't let them see this bit.

Because it's going to contain several phrases you might not feel like explaining - such as pack rape, crack dens and prostitutes.

On TVNZ's Sunday programme last week, a reporter went to a Wellington boys' high school and asked how many of them had played an R18 video game called Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

According to enthusiastic reviewers, who say things like, "this game will own you" and "it feels totally real", it is head-and-shoulders above any other game on the market.

The player takes on the role of a criminal and earns points by decapitating police, raping prostitutes, shooting or slitting the throats of innocent bystanders, stealing cars and beating people with baseball bats, in between visiting strip clubs and crack dens and living a glamorised gang lifestyle.

Anyway, in the senior year, it looked like every hand in the class went up. They had all played it, despite the fact only one of them was 18. The same thing happened at every level, right down to what used to be called the third form.

A survey found 87 per cent of boys aged 15 to 17 had played R18 games and 35 per cent said their parents bought the videos for them.

The programme also featured a young mum who said she was quite happy for her 7-year-old to play it. He "didn't have it in him" to be violent, she said, and she was confident those sorts of games would not affect his behaviour.

Maybe I am over-protective, but I cannot fathom how parents could encourage children to play a game where they pretend to beat people to a pulp and take part in pack rapes, let alone kids so young they are still learning to tie their own shoelaces.

Research from the United States this week found it was not just aggressive people or those predisposed to violence who were affected by violent TV or video game images. The Indiana University study found that exposure to violent scenes affected the part of the brain involved in decision-making and self-control - regardless of whether there was any history of aggressive or disruptive behaviour.

Narelle Dawson, a Hamilton psychologist who appeared on the Sunday programme, said ultra-violent games were inappropriate for anyone, not just young people.

"As someone who has seen hundreds and hundreds of children beaten, abused, raped, and women who have been exposed to years of torture and violence, for me [they are] totally unacceptable."

Clearly, however, most people disagree because while there has been plenty of huffing and puffing about parents who dare deliver a smack to the bottom of a naughty child, the news that most of our teenage boys are playing incredibly violent R18 video games caused barely a ripple.

The question I found myself asking was: which kids are more likely to grow up aggressive - those who spent hours in a fantasy world committing virtual rape and murder or those whose parents gave them a quick whack on the backside for dishonesty, disrespect or dangerous behaviour?

Which is potentially more damaging: "Sweetheart, I love you very much but there is a consequence for running out on to the road", followed by a smack on the bottom and then a hug; or, "Sweetheart, here's an exciting new video game for you, you get to rape women and steal police cars"?

As far as the smacking debate goes, what we really need is objective, unbiased information about the effects of anti-smacking legislation in other countries: has it reduced child abuse or not?

Unfortunately, it seems extraordinarily difficult to get a straight answer. Depending on what you read or who is talking, the ban on smacking in Sweden, for example, is either a success or a disaster.

A report by Save the Children in 2000 claimed there had been no child abuse fatalities in Sweden since the ban in 1979. But according to a Goteborg newspaper, there were about seven such deaths annually throughout the 90s, and a Unicef study two years ago showed that death rates due to explicit maltreatment are virtually identical in countries with and without smacking bans.

Some say Swedish social workers can now intervene earlier on behalf of children, preventing the escalation of violence. But others say youngsters are being taken away from their parents far too quickly, destroying families in the process.

In one report, you read that abuse cases referred to Stockholm hospitals declined significantly after the ban; then the next claims that assaults by relatives on children under seven went up more than 400 per cent.

The picture needs to be a lot clearer before we rush to emulate Sweden's policies.

And in the meantime, if we're serious about reducing violence in society, we should be taking a good hard look at the games our kids are playing.