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Games - The Jury Is Out And Confused
Thanks to Blue's News for pointing to a New York Times article entitled 'On Video Games, the Jury Is Out and Confused' (registration required). It talks about the mixed messages being given to parents about video gaming, especially with regard to violent content, and its effect on their children: "In the face of contradictory, inconclusive or just plain confusing evidence, some parents... agonize over what limits to set." One concerned mother even has to keep her spouse in check as well: "My husband is a little hard to control. Sometimes he lets them rent games with little figures on top of buildings trying to shoot each other off." What limits do you or your relatives put on their children's gaming, and why?
The best guideline of any is to play *with* your children. Gaming can be a social event, if parents participate in it with their children. There's no need to let small children sit by their consoles/computers all day unsupervised.
As kids grow older, they need less supervising. If a parent judges their child to be mature enough, there's no need for any supervision. Now, the problem is that most people let the TV or the computer raise their kids instead of doing it themselves. Newsflash: Entertainment can never be a substitute for interaction.
How about parents actually act like parents and take some responsibility for their kids?
Which do you think would be more like a responsible parent:
a) Reviewing the games/movies/etc your child wants, and deciding if that's the kind of thing you want him/her to have.
or
b) Letting a bunch of people you don't (and probably never will) know tell you wht they think your child should be exposed to?
=Smidge=
...little figures on top of buildings trying to shoot each other off
reminds me of that old qbasic game where gorillas calculated tragectories and tried to blow each other up with bananas. occasionally my middleschool math teacher let us play that game during class. i never heard any stories about students throwing banana pipe bombs at eachother, though.
this whole thing of blaming violent activities on games is just part of an endemic problem with passing the buck. little murdurers just need to be made to face the music and be responsible for their own actions. no virtual finger pulled the trigger.
the truth may be that violent and disturbed people are drawn to violent and disturbing games. most people people who play the games have a clear grasp of what is fantasy and what is reality, but there are some who are already messed up in the head and warped games just add to the problem.
Every time you prohibit a child of committing virtual violence you're somehow assuming that that's real somehow. Video game violence is _not_ violence, and if you put it in the head of the child that doing that is wrong, you're completely blurring the notion of what's real and what's not.
I think it's OK for parents to limit the amount of video game a child plays, but it shouldn't have anything to do with morals. Its more of health issue. Kids should be out and playing more...
How about you spend time with your kids and teach them what's wrong and what's right, teach them the difference between real and fiction, talk to them about what they might see instead of always jumping on limiting their imagination. Not all parents drop their kids in front of the TV as day care, but I've seen this happen so many times it makes me sick. I played video games when I was young, even at an early age I knew that what I saw on the TV was not real, whether I was controlling it or not. Sure video games influence children, but good parenting influences them a hell of a lot more. I'm not sure what bothers me more, that there are children that are growing up raised by the television, or that there are parents that find this so acceptable that they want someone else to set a guideline of what's ok for their children. Video games are fine for children, not teaching them to discern between fact and fiction is just deplorable. If your kid is going to go out and act out a sniper scene in a game at 14 years old, you either took a horribly wrong turn as a parent or your kid is in need of specialized help that the ESRB can't give you. Stop shifting the blame, accept some responsibility, if you're not willing to do that: don't have kids.
As I recently wrote in an essay, the problem lies with the generation that made these video games, not with the children who play them.
As the video game making generation obviously weren't fucked up by video games, we have to assume it was something else that did.
Perhaps your wording is a bit off, but there don't really seem to be a lot of problems with the generation that's making these games (except for the fact that they seem a bit obsessed with excessive violence). The reason people are worried about the contents of video games, although in part due to the excessive nature of some video games, is because they feel that kids are becoming too violent. There wasn't a school shooting in the district I attended for over 20 years (and the girl that committed the earlier shooting was only recently even reviewed for parole, and didn't receive it), and then all of a sudden there were 2 in 2 weeks. Columbine received nation-wide coverage, and Doom (and KMFDM and Marilyn Manson) got the blame (and all of us gamers wondered why Doom was the only violent game they found on their systems, given that the game was nearly ancient by PC technology standards).
Is it the perception of parents (the pervasiveness of media)? Is it the actual parenting? Is it the games/music/movies (my feelings are that it's not, probably because I was raised with nearly unlimited exposure and haven't killed anyone)?
Either way, I don't think there's anything wrong with the people making the video games. In one sense they're making what the market asks for (which in part is games for their own generation, GTA isn't marketed to kids as far as I have seen), in another sense they tend to try to go over the top just for the sake of it (like Stephen King once said, when you can't scare your reader, go for the gross-out).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Video game violence and its affect on children will be forever a popular topic on Slashdot. Why do we focus on, like the earlier article where Mom Blames Video Games. Let's face it, if video games have a psychological impact on teenagers, then we must conclude they have a psychological impact on adults. Do adults ever get to blame movies, books, and videogames for their crimes? Ummm, no. They may try, but no.
So we should focus on where we're held responsible. Does it really matter if an outside influence affects our judgement? If it results in breaking the law, absolutely not! Do I think the games affect people's moods, personalities, and actions? Probably. Does it matter? Nope.
We should teach our kids and adults more about penalties for misdeeds. I think the proper fear of consequences can go a lot further than trying to remove a "bad influence." We also need to balance that with proper teaching and modeling of good behavior for children and adults.