Sims the New Dolls?

philgross writes "According to the New York Times, lots of girls and younger teens are abandoning their dolls for the Sims. Says one professor, "We leave most of the social work in our society to women and The Sims lets young girls, in particular, work out their desires and conflicts about those relationships." Says another, "Children generally want to create characters, but with girls we see them wanting to create a friend." Meanwhile, says Will Wright, boys will "do the same stupid thing over and over again and be happy," (and I wince looking at my vast collection of first-person shooters). The article does quote one 10-year-old boy who plays with Sims, and has learned valuable life lessons. "I learned don't leave your baby crying or people will come take your baby away."" And I learned that if you lock Sims in your upstairs torture chamber, with no tiles to sit, they eventually cry themselves to death.

Comments

It's a little sad

[deanj]

It's a little sad that kids would have to learn something like that from a game, rather than having parents that think enough of their children to explain stuff like that to them. Better yet, they should lead by example.

Re:It's a little sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, they should lead by example.

That's backwards. If they lead by example then they DON'T leave the baby crying and the child never finds out what would have happened. The Sims showed the kid what would have happened if the his parents' example wasn't followed.

Re:It's a little sad

[sugar and acid]

Actually children learn a lot of things through play. Dolls are a classic example, where the child will use various dolls (and stuffed toys etc.) and play act them interacting in a social manner. The parents can give good examples and explain important aspect of being a well adjusted social indivdual, but then these lessons are acted out during play and are thus reinforced (unfortunatly the same will be true of bad parenting to). The sims just happens to be a more interactive version of this type of play, where the social interaction is already built into the program.

Re:It's a little sad

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

It's up to the person "learning" to tell the difference between "right" and "wrong"

If the parents did a good job, s/he would know that killing is "wrong" even if a video game says it's OK.

The parents should be and are a bigger influance on their children than video games. Although some parents wish that weren't true.

Re:It's a little sad

[kfg]

Children do not learn social skills from explanation. They learn from . . .games.

Witness kittens playing. Games are the imperical mode of trying out behaviors in a noncritical manner, like, with a real baby.

And where do they find behaviors to try out?

Better yet, they should lead by example.

Ok, ya got me there. Monkey see. Monkey do. Don't like it when your kids do things you'd rather they didn't do? Well, don't do it yourself for starters. Kids learn adult behavior by observing adult behavior and trying it out.

Kids are supposed to engage in adult behavior. They're designed for it. It's how they learn to do it. Most parents are dumbasses when it comes to this issue; and we've created a dumbass society with regards to the maturation process as a result.

Ever notice that when most parents say "Act your age" they really mean, at heart, stop acting more mature than I'm comfortable with, i.e. act younger than your age. (The dumbass parents, of course, think they're telling their kids to act older than their age. That's because most parents are dumbasses)

If you don't want your kids trying to sneak into the liquor cabinet, don't have one. They do it because they wish to grow up and see grown ups drinking liquor and defining it as grownup behavior.

If you don't want to get rid of the liquor cabinet, at least give the poor kids a game that allows them to drink, but also necessitates they are responsible for the consequences.

That way they'll learn.

It's all about games.

KFG

Re:It's a little sad

[Shazow]

Dolls are a classic example, where the child will use various dolls (and stuffed toys etc.) and play act them interacting in a social manner.

Perhaps it has something to do with visualization. I also recall when I was younger, I used to play out all sorts of social sequences and situations with action figures, lego characters, etc. Now that I'm older, I still play out similar situations but they all happen in my head.

Maybe it's just that when we're younger, we have more trouble visualizing things in our mind so we need the help of dolls (or Sims). Later on, when our brains are more developed (and we gathered more experience), we can handle running such simulations in our heads.

Too bad none of my psych classes covered this.

- shazow

Re:It's a little sad

[kfg]

I was waiting for you to show up. That was the weakest part of my post, written in a hurry while drinking my first cup of coffee of the day. What parents mean when they say "act your age" is actually very complex, but what it almost never means is "act your age." It would take at least a small monograph to explore it.

. . .mean "grow up and take responsibility for your actions".

This, however, is sort of what I said when I said that parents think they are telling their kids to act older than their age.

It isn't what the parents are actually saying though. What they are actually saying is "be a kid, i.e., shut up and do as I tell you."

Adult maturity can be defined as doing as you wish, but taking responsiblity for the consequences. This is how the kids are often actually behaving when told to "act their age" (at least with older kids, the sort that might be playing The Sims. A two year old having a hissy fit is acting his/her age. Two is the age to learn how to throw hissy fits. Throwing hissy fits and saying "No" is part of learning to make your own decisions and be responsible for the consequences. Some people just never manage to mature beyond this behavior perfectly appropriate for a two year old).

They really are asking the child to behave more like an adult (e.g. do homework without being hounded about it, etc).

Well, first off, you'll have to demonstrate to me that adults "do their homework" without being hounded about it. I've seen little concrete evidence of such behavior.

However, let's set that aside for the sake of argument and posit your example.

Mature adult behavior is not doing your homework. Mature adult behavior is making the decision on your own, for your own reasons, whether or not to do your homework, and taking responsbility for the consequences.

Hounding a kid to do their homework is exactly the sort of dumbass parental behavior I'm talking about when I say that "act your age" means "do as I tell you to," i.e., be a kid, when they think they are saying "act more mature," i.e., behave as you wish.

The dumbass part of this is that the parent is focused on entirely the wrong thing, having the homework get done, when the correct thing to focus is the behavior of the kid. Hounding a kid to do their homework has only one possible affect on the kid's behavior, to create a greater resistence to doing homework, "requiring" more and more hounding as time goes by.

It's not uncommon for first graders to love going to school. By about third grade they hate it, because they have been taught to hate it by various people hounding them about schoolwork. Kids want to learn. In fact, they crave it with an often fatal passion. They will put their finger in the pretty flame. . .once.

Kids hating to go to school and/or do their homework isn't a problem with the kid. It's a problem with the teachers and parents. They're being dumbasses, adopting behaviors of their own that necessarily drive the kids away from the behaviors they wish the kids to adopt.

Because they do not want the kids to mature. They want them to shut up and do as they're told; and right now we have a society that tells them this is the way they should behave until their eighteenth birthday, when they are then supposed to automagically transform into responsible adults, without ever having taught, or evern offered the opportunity to learn on their own, just how to do that.

And, of course, as per above, too many adults define mature adult behavior as shutting up and doing what you are told, even for adults, i.e. "do your homework" just because we said so, and without resistence.

I'm afraid I'm in the corner with just about any "kid" who looks at their parents/teachers/bosses and says, "Fuck that shit."

If you want me to behave in a particular manner, make it

Learn By Doing

[martyb]

It's the scientific method applied to life - in a game environment so it encourages exploration while having fun. It encourages trial and error. I often learn best from what goes wrong - not just from what succeeds. This reminds me of a couple quotations which have helped me greatly through the years:

Life is a harsh teacher - it gives the test first and the lesson later.

and:

Tell me and I'll forget;
Show me and I may remember;
Involve me and I will understand.

(I wish I had attribution for these... does anyone know who wrote them?)

The other thing I see is that the game is safe. The player can try things *objectively* without the risk of an *emotional* reaction that a parent might produce. "What the *&#@(% were you THINKING?" I am NOT suggesting parents abdicate their responsibilities to a game! For example: hitting my little brother got a swift reaction from my parents. I learned that I didn't want to get punished, so I stopped doing it. Playing it out in a game, I would get to see the emotional, long-term damage that it would cause -- I would better understand why it was a bad idea.

Uh, sure.

[bansai665]

Interesting perspective considering that the game has more romantic interactions than anything else. It has very little educational value, if any.

Hypothetical "What I learned from the sims" (from a child's perspective):

* Garden gnomes will always be stolen.
* Chinese food takes hours to eat.
* If I go across the street or next door, I need to take a car.
* All female Housemaids wear sexy clothing.
* I can dedicate my life to having as many lovers as possible.
* Mom and Dad do woohoo.
* Nannies are unreliable and rarely show up on time.
* I don't have to wash my hands after I use the bathroom.

(and the list goes on)

Seriously, the game plays by Sim rules not "real life" rules. What is there to actually learn?