Wow, it looks like the Brazilian president is clearly not a fan of video games. The far-left socialist agitator who was elected earlier year stated that video games are teaching children how to kill. He went on to say that video games promote death and violence with no real educational value. Clearly, the man is not a fan of video games and is spewing rhetoric that gamers have been dealing with since the 90s. If anything, we can see that this kind of boomer attitude is still prevalent in 2023. After narrowly winning the election earlier this year, Lula spoke at a conference about hate speech and in his infinite wisdom targeted video games and not the pervasive culture of violence that is uniquely Brazilian.
According to a report on ResetEra, the Brazilian president stated. “When my son is four years old and he cries, what do I do for him? I immediately give him a tablet to play with”. He then went on to say that games breed an environment of violence and murder, going so far as to say video games were teaching kids how to kill. It’s precisely this kind of baseless rhetoric that gamers have had to deal with for decades now. There is literally no evidence linking video games to rising crime. In fact, the opposite is true. The Oxford Internet Institute published a report that stated “These experiences during play may be even more important than the actual amount of time a player invests in games and could play a major role in the well-being of players.”. It’s been clear for a long time now that these kinds of ignorant statements do more harm than good but then again, what can we expect from a person who wants to ban free speech?
In fact, to counter the asinine arguments by Lula, there are a ton of educational and non-violent games out there. If only the man had done his research before he made those ridiculous statements. He could have brought up any of the Mario games as pargon of light-hearted fun, or even any of the cool Lego games out there. But, ignorant is what ignorant does, and I wonder what Brazilian gamers who voted for Lula have to say about this.