Introduction

Imagine it’s 4:00 on a Sunday afternoon. You are picking up your eight-year-old child who has just spent the weekend at a friend’s house. You are in the car and you ask your child what he did over the weekend. He tells you that he carjacked eleven cars (which is nowhere near your son’s friend’s record of twenty), ran over prostitutes, eluded the cops that he didn’t run over with his car, and participated in a drug heist. What would your thoughts be? You might think he has a vivid imagination, or you wonder what he’s hearing from the other kids at school, or perhaps even from his friend.

But your childmight be reporting more accurately than you want to believe. Incidents such as these are frequent in several video games that have been deemed inappropriate for children. You might think that, because you do not allow such games at your house or do not condone them, your child will escape exposure to this type of “entertainment.”

In fact, exposure to violent and otherwise inappropriate video games is increasingly prevalent, even among children as young as five. Exposure is not limited to children in troubled families or who lack adult supervision.Many children who become involved in such games come from stable homes with very caring parents. Studies of video games have found some troubling facts:

• Over 70% of teenage boys reported played the carjacking game mentioned at the beginning of this article
• 80% of minors who tried to buy mature-rated games were able to do so
• 90% of teens reported that their parents ‘never’ check the ratings before allowing them to rent or buy video games, and only 1% of teens reported that their parents had ever kept them from getting a game because of its rating
• Studies have shown that playing violent video games is related to aggression

next

Parenting Start