Wow... I blame cartoons and video games and... the TUBA...

[A Black Falcon]

And yet kids are killing each other to a degree exponentially greater than in my mom's childhood.

It's simple. This isn't true.

And as for influences on society... I don't know. Videogames probably do influence people to be more innured to violence... not necessarially to be more violent, but to be more used to it. Does that make you more likely to be violent? As I've said before, only if you already have problems... but even so the question of 'how much should we deem acceptable' does raise itsself. Of course, I don't want videogames censored, but if in the end it takes carding, I'll be unhappy but would understand it as a measure to keep control over how we teach our children...

And then I'd hope for a long, hard look at the current state of the music industry (rap for instance is so unbelievably horrible, between the glorification of a life of crime and murder and stuff to the extremely strong homophobia and sexism and beyond...)... but anyway, it probably would be bad for a little kid to play Doom, they're not old enough to really understand the difference between fantasy and reality yet for the most part... that's why there are ratings: because they do have a point. The way children learn is by absorbing what is around them, and they will learn based on the society they are in. If that society says "discrimination and violence are good", then that's what they'll learn... but of course on the other hand you shouldn't go around blocking content from people who are mature enough to understand that it is just fantasy and not reality (and that we shouldn't let things like those become reality, in most cases), so it's a tricky balance. I absolutely disagree with the methods of countries that ban games entirely for being too violent, for instance. Sure, they may have horrible messages, etc, but banning them completely? That's not right, unless the game actually does something to break your nation's hate speech laws or something... (remember most nations do not allow hate speech like the US does)