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Holy shit it's finally happening
(lemmy.world)
Apparently Mexico is considering a tax on violent video games and that’s what this is about.
The tax on violent games? I haven’t read up on it too much but it sounds like another moral panic.
It's based on some studies that show some correlation between teenagers being more aggressive when playing violent games, done by psychologists and whatnot. It's not a matter of prohibition, but just to discourage it.
The actual psychologist's conclusion is that if the parents keep a good relationship with said teens, that is more likely to keep their aggressiveness down, since there's no actual way to link games to violence directly. So this is more along the lines of taxing cigarettes and alcohol to make it so kids don't isolate themselves or grow addicted, as well (or so they claim).
Also, the tax is 8%
There's a larger counter literature that has repeatedly debunked those claims since the 90s. Meta-analyses basically confirm it's mostly cherry picking, because there're issues with causation (violent kids like violent games) and issues conflating emotional arousal and violence (e.g. when studied long term kids chill out after 2hrs even if in the moment they're getting intense).
There may still be good reason to bar very young kids from it, much as we do with horror movies and such. Not making them violent so much as giving them nightmares, though. True for squeamish adults too, lol.
I think they're referring to the study where it was shown the aggressiveness was raised while playing a game. But if I remember correctly, that same study showed that after gaming, aggression was lower than a control group. So it seems violent games raise it temporarily but lower it the rest of the day.
Which, btw, sports also do
I know of these, which is why I think the tax won't work.
The responsibility of what games kids play falls on the parents, and that's why the games have ratings. Which is also why the games being taxed are those that are rated as 18+. So the fact that teens are playing them is somewhat of a redundancy.
And I know that most of us played M-rated games when we were teens, hell I played Conker's Bad Fur Day when I was like 8, but my point about it is that even the psychologist they quoted in the article I read ~~in spanish~~ said that the actual solution was for parents to foster a good relationship with their kids. Said article also said that they would probably get around 185 million pesos (roughly 9.7 million USD) from games alone with that tax, so you can probably guess where their goal is actually at
Edit: Article for anyone curious - https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/entretenimiento/2025/09/09/nuevo-impuesto-a-videojuegos-en-mexico-en-que-consiste-y-cuales-tendran-el-8-extra/
Edit 2: missing word
Squeamish adults are generally wise enough to know what's likely going to give them nightmares and avoid it accordingly though.
Teenagers are also more aggressive when playing sports, do we tax them for football now?
Yes, introduce a flat fee for headers
Yes, just tax COD and FIFA, incentivize gamers to play better games.
Hey now, I never said I agree. I'm just explaining their flawed logic lol
~~Also yes, tax sports~~