Kill Them All!

For his tenth birthday, my nephew Xavier got a computer from his parents. He insisted on having internet, saying he needs it for homework, which was a schoolboy’s way of saying network gaming. Rules were imposed, and sanctions made clear, but he always manages to get around them.

He is now almost twelve, and everyday after school he hurries finishing his homework so he could start playing virtual combat games with his friends, some of whom he met online. He usually eats dinner at his “gaming station.” His weekends are not spent playing basketball or biking with the neighborhood kids, but on a chair in front of a computer, fighting other players and beating them in collecting magical items.

His mother Ria expressed concern about his computer habits. She observed that it had made him lazy, and he’s been increasingly violent, both in the way he talked and how he acted. He shouts often, bullies others a lot, and picks fights just so he could show moves he copies from his games. When scolded, he would go to his room, bang the door, and then hit the walls with his fist. He asked for an air gun from his grandma, but when his dad found out he was shooting at birds in the back yard, his dad took it from him. He later saved his allowance and bought another one. Their houseboy also told Ria that Xavier had asked him to buy him a switchblade so he could practice the hand tricks of one of his online characters. Then, one night, while getting things from Xavier’s room, Ria was alarmed when Xavier, asleep, suddenly swung his arm, as if carrying a sword, and shouted “Kill them all!”

Ria was all the more aghast when at breakfast that morning, there was a story on the news of a teenage boy who went to school with his father’s hunting rifle, then shot at his schoolmates. The boy’s latest post on his online diary said, “I want to try it for real and see if the gun’s trigger is as sensitive as the mouse button.”

Xavier’s computer is now temporarily in a box in his parents’ bedroom.