It’s a shame that parents are banning certain forms of media due to the nature of it instead of explaining that fantasy is absolutely different than reality. Banning isn’t the answer, teaching and providing understanding is the answer.

I think they’re missing the key element…. not the violent game play in a fantasy setting. This has always existed in child play. The key is that this is typically live, -anonymous- play with other people. The sense of humanity playing with other real people is lost in this world of anonymity.

That’s my biggest challenge as a parent is explaining why how you treat people in game should not be any different than in real life. They’re people, but to my son, it’s a game.

If your not going to take the time to make sure your child understands the REAL dangers that violence and guns can bring into there life then they shouldn’t be playing them.
If you think a 7 year old is old enough to tell the difference between whats real and whats not. You better make sure of that so he doesn’t end up hurting himself or someone else.

And yes it can happen to you, don’t be ignorant and blind Thats how we end up with situations like the columbine shootings! That may be an extreme example but it is what can happen if parents keep turning a blind eye to what there children are involved in at home and away.

Has anyone ever considered that more aggressive, less caring individuals may just be attracted to violent video games? The fact that these results show correlation does not mean causation in my opinion.

Besides undermining a child’s sense of morality, the structure of the games can contribute to friction in the family. As a parent, the one thing that infuriates me most about even the games rated lowest in violence is that pauses and saves aren’t easy to do without losing the game or losing data. In my house I want those games to follow the same rules as my son does: you do what you are told when you are told. Instead, my son is punished by the game if he does what I want him to do. Instead of undermining parental authority and making us parents out to be the bad guys in our childrens’ eyes, how about game developers adding a stop button? Just be polite to us. (My son can pause his nintendo DS by closing it, but by the time he gets it open again after completing a chore, he often loses.)

Where are the parents of these kids? Children should not be raised in a vacuum and this sort of study seems to assume this.

Amen Eddy. The best way to make sure your kids are not becoming violent children just because of the video games they play is to monitor what they play and how often they play it.

I agree that parents should have control of the types of games their kids play and the industry makes it easy by putting a rating system on each game that tells you the type of content that can be found in the game. sadly a lot people seem to ignore those ratings and get their kids anything.

I still disagree that violent games MAKE kids more hostile I wonder if it has more to do with the parenting of those who allow kids to play really violent games. Parents that don’t care what their kids do, that don’t really spend times with their kids and teach them right from wrong.

I think its the lack of supervision and teaching children what is real and what is fantasy.
A lot of parents let there kids play whatever they want without even thinking twice about it.

A child who starts playing these games young with no concept of what he can and can not do will get it in his mind to start acting like the thing he is most influenced by.

It is NOT the jobs of the video game makers to make nicer games
It is 100% up to the parents of children to make sure there kids are not overly exposed to these games.

It is after all just something to do for fun not something to use as a babysitter..
I personally do not think anyone under the age of 13 should be playing them PERIOD!
Children are very impressionable and they need to be learning what is right what is wrong and how to treat people. If the only thing they have teaching them these things is video games and the people they chat with while playing them they are learning extremely bad lessons.

I was once cussed out by a 8 year old while playing a game because he lost..
That is just wrong on so many different levels. Why was an 8 year old up at 1am playing Call of duty?

Where are his parents?

i believe it is really scary and hurtful

@What_about_me? – you are joking right? You sound like an intolerant inflexible authoritarian!

Here’s an idea – Tell your son he has these chores to do. They must be done by x o’clock. Dinner time is at x o’clock – if he knows this before hand it is his responsibility to save the game at an appropriate time.
Create boundaries but let him decide how to work within them.

Now if he doesn’t follow the rule remove the game, DS, whatever for 1 day to a week. Explain to him what you are doing and why when setting the boundaries and rules, and if needs to be punished. This way you are developing skills and character around rules and consequences. Currently he feels you’re just doing things because you feel he should do what you want him to do. Following rules because someone says so makes us all shitty. When we understand the rule, the point, etc we are far more likely to obey the it.

Unless a person is a developmentally retarded, I have yet to meet anyone who is old enough to understand complex language with whom you cannot reason. Interestingly, the older they are with attitudes like yours the less able they are to effectively follow through with reasoned argument (they understand the concept but feel they are right even when shown wrong).

BTW – with your current attitude you are setting your child up for some serious issues when he’s older… you are going to be very disappointed when he’s in his teens!

@-anonymous- exactly – WTF is a child playing adult games? If a person is under 16 they should not have access to the internet unless it is in the family room. And while some computer games can be fun, they should be developmentally appropriate for the person (some 12 year olds have better a symbolic understanding of games than some 15 year olds!)

As someone who has played games since they started with a typed command (”You are in a dark room. You have a key”.) and still play them regularly… they do not assist in anyway with a person’s learning. A bucket of sand is interactive. A game is linear.

But I suppose it’s always easier to blame games, society, television, the printed word, that wandering minstrel, than one’s own parenting or behaviour :\

While I won’t rule out the possibility that this is perfectly valid research, I do wonder whether other factors were ruled out, and how many of the studies contributing to the meta-study are actually scientifically rigorous, vs. something done by a group of university students primarily for an assignment and a grade. And how many of the researchers reached conclusions different than expected? The best research is when the researcher concludes their study and is left with no choice other than to admit that their initial hypothesis was totally wrong.

What I’m mostly concerned about with the results of these studies is that correlation does not imply causation. In this case, perhaps the parents of the children studied have themselves set poor examples for their children to follow, and the video games are just a symptom of the child’s parents’ behavior.

Sitting down and talking with (and not at) your children, listening to them, understanding them, teaching them, and setting examples for them yourself are usually pretty critical to raising a healthy, high-functioning, productive adult. But many people I’ve known do not prioritize their children’s lives appropriately. It’s frequently a sign that the parent is more concerned with their own life (I’m not saying to the exclusion of their children here, just more than appropriate or necessary) than with the raising of their child. In other words, the parent is self-interested, self-absorbed, selfish, ego-centric etc. In such a case, I cannot help but wonder what kind of effect this example has on the child, and that it would have consequences far above and beyond what the type of games the child plays would have on the child.

What I’m suggesting here is that the parenting, and specifically the parent’s behavior and way of being is the actual risk factor for the observed negative outcomes, and the violent video game is merely one catalyst out of a number of other equally detrimental catalysts that would set the negative outcome ball in motion.

You can only play video games for so many hours per day. But your parents the constants that are with you during the majority of your youth life. Do any of these studies rule out possible factors of this nature? If not, then perhaps what the studies are observing are symptoms of the problem rather than their root causes. And like we tend to do with problems in life, we remain ignorant of the danger of the knife we figuratively hold in our hand, and keep putting bandages on our cuts rather than expend the time and effort to notice where they came from; to put cream on our mosquito bites or constantly apply insect repellent rather than do something about the uneven ground facilitating the puddle in the yard where the mosquitoes are breeding. It’s important that we definitively identify root causes, and eliminate the likelihood that we’re just observing a symptom. And if there are exceptions to the rule in most of these studies, then we have probably identified a flaw in the results. If violent video games are the ROOT cause, then the effect should be universal, and I’m not completely certain that it is.

I suppose the only useful answer is to look up the original research paper and read it, and the studies referenced for myself.

kids should be allowed to play violent video games because its their choice and ………………..

@Michael B – How funny! our child’s teacher has told us we should be proud of the way we have raised our child, we should continue to do what we are doing, and that the he is very happy.

What I don’t like is something else, like for example,a computer game, intruding on my family, and yes, interfering with my command. As with any young animal- mammal, dinosaur, etc., a child should be able to respond quickly and obediently, for his own safety but also for the good of the family.

The problem is the intrusion into the family structure. You sound like a marketer who’s upset that a parent is pushing back against influence from the outside world. Unlike the lessons you’ve learned from somewhere, sitcoms probably, parents are supposed to be in control until the kid can’t stand it any longer and flies the nest. (Yep, kicking him out someday if necessary is a logical option.) As for being some sort of horrible dictator, I’ve seen and heard enough to realize children are a lot safer and happier with authoritative parents who take time to explain their decisions, and that’s what we try to do.

As for your suggestions, they just don’t fit all situations, and certainly not ours. It would be lovely to be as scheduled as you are, but we have business issues and health issues that often shift our schedule.

PS: You probably misunderstood the concept of “punish.” Our child gets to play 45 minutes on a school day without interruption, and then a timer goes off. The game software and hardware sometimes do not let him get to a safe place for another 10 minutes to 15 minutes. Five minutes often has to be enough to prevent missing chores and upsetting the household. Unlike you, I feel sad for him that he is having to lose points and has to repeat parts because he has obeyed me and doesn’t have a button he can push to instantly stop the game. Now, wouldn’t you like there to a button he can press so he can save his game at any point? That was my original suggestion, by the way.

Video games are an excellent source of entertainment for the whole family. It is important, however, that parents spend time to educate their children about online gaming and teach them to make the right choices while interacting with people online. Online gaming is a playground for strangers, so we better watch out for our kids before it’s too late.

……………………….

video games are really really cool. cALL ME 203-427-5652

Why does the friggin government always feel like it has to step in and parent people? Are parents not responsible enough to know what kind of video games their kids are playing? When I was like 8 I played Mortal Kombat with my dad all the time. I play-fought with my friend acting like we were doing the moves in the game, but we knew that it was a game and we shouldn’t be beating the crap out of each other in reality.

Parents need to tell their kids that it is a game, or a movie, or a tv show, or a (GASP) book and that it isn’t necessarily how reality works. You can’t bar them from doing anything. If the kids do start having problems differentiating between fantasy and reality then take the thing away (and replace it with something else) until they can control themselves. When I was really little I had to quit watching the Ninja Turtles because I had trouble differentiating between it and reality. My parents took it away, I learned. But don’t jump up and down and say “See you admitted it!” because I was four when this happened, not 8.

The whole idea of not letting a 7,8,9, 10, 11 year old (or a kid that had developed some capacity for reason) play a video game borders on ridiculous in my opinion. Once people are a certain age they realize that some things are fantasy. Why aren’t all the kids that watched action movies when they were little our murdering people these days? What about violent cartoons? Tom and Jerry is pretty violent with Tom trying to kill Jerry all the time. Or what about Wily E. Coyote?

I’m not saying that violent media doesn’t have a desensitizing effect and it can’t affect mood, but what I am saying is that it doesn’t do that for everyone and people need to be responsible enough to know when to limit themselves from certain activities. If I feel like I spend too much time reading articles on the computer then I limit myself from doing that. If you are too young to be responsible for your actions then your parents need to be.

People fail to realize that video games are often a way for some kids to socialize. I know when I was young that I played video games with friends. I also watched movies with them, camped out in the backyard and ran around and played with them….. outside (yes, we still played outside even though the video games were trying to turn us into fat slobs /sarsasm). Also, consider that I tried to socialize in high school and never fit into the cliques/groups/whatever you want to call them so I kept myself busy playing video games. They are a good way to escape for a lot of people.

Overdoing anything is bad, that can’t be argued against (well, it can, but…)

Also, I think it is unreasonable to MAKE kids do things they don’t enjoy. If you take a kid out and try to get him to throw baseball with you, or go on a camping trip, or anything really and they continually express disinterest in that then leave them alone! I agree there are certain circumstances in which a kid has to be forced to do things, but to force them to do things that you WANT them to enjoy is silly. If a kid doesn’t exhibit any major problems then let him play his video game system.

-anonymous- up there is trying to blame violent video games on the Columbine shootings? Dear god, not again. Those individuals were just plain sick. They were outcasts in their high school and were already violent, disgusting individuals. Them playing Quake didn’t drive them to learn how to make homemade bombs and buy assault weapons and run around the school murdering people. If that were the case then why aren’t all the kids that play war shooters ALL THE TIME out committing mass murders? You know why, because violent people are attracted to violent stuff anyway. Lots of violent games are just a way for the player to have some adversary to fight against and get you into the game because of an adrenaline rush. Very few people that I know of are playing the popular games like Halo because they enjoy killing other cyborgs. They enjoy it because its an adrenaline rush and a way for them to compete with their friends.

Its not the game that makes us violent. Its the combonation of violence and desensetation of our youth to which we find joy in the pain of others. Also when you make a game your basic religion then you feel comfortable when enacting things in the violent nature of your perfered game. What ever happened to mario brothers!!!!!

videro games really arnt bad tere ment to entertain people help them relax and excape just the same as movies and books some people should raise there kids and stop blamin every thing else

There has been demonstrable correlation betwwen visual exposure to violence and a lack of empathy towards it. It doesn’t seem to matter if it is fantasy or reality, when it is sufficiently graphic.

The fact that video games are violent doesn’t make someone commit heinous acts against society. Predisposition to do these things comes from within someone’s person, and the ability to carry out acts of violence against another person (or animal…) is limited to individuals who have some sort of psychological disorder. I have seen “Silence of the Lambs” and not eaten anyone’s liver with a nice Chianti. And as far as parents go, you cannot force anyone to do anything that they don’t want to do without imprisonment or the use of violence anyway. Guidance and counseling are among the only options that are available to parents, and those should be sufficient enough to deter most sane individuals from shooting their neighbors or running up to steal the next car that goes by. I own a gun, but am not going to go shoot someone the next time I get angry, because I have basic reasoning skills that tell me to not harm others, but I do enjoy “pwning some n00bz” while I play Battlefield. In conclusion, it all comes down to the choices that the individuals face, their ability to reason, and their ability to foresee consequences of their actions. As long as the individual isn’t suffering from sort of mental abnormality, they should be able to keep from killing other people or beating them up or stealing their car after playing video games of any kind.

Video games are training tools. I find my eye hand coordination is improved after a month of playing, and I definitely feel more responsive to physical situations around me because my awareness of physical details increases in the real world.

The downsides are that because it’s more intense than the real world, like anything “intense” it lends itself to addiction (be it Tetris, Violent video game, sex, drinking, etc.).

As for morality… well if you are predisposed toward violence, video games are not going to make you meaner. A lot of fun loving, never hurt a fly folks play video games and the opposite is usually the result.

After you play a while you are amped for a bit afterward, but then you are actually more calm later. I’m the calmest person you’ll ever meet. You would never know I just finished off “killing” 30 virtual people 5 minutes ago… Reality check. Games dont’ kill people, violent people kill people.

I think that the parents really need to sit kids down and go over the difference between fantasy and reality. I remember growing up playing games like 007. Resident Evil, and others, and the early GTA. All of which required me to use a gun to succeed. I knew though, when I turned off that console, I was back in the real world. Kids don’t get that concept today because the parents don’t care in my opinion.