Is Your Child Obsessed With Video Games?

What concerns me much more than the quantity of time being spent with video games is the quality – or total lack thereof – of many of the games being played the most.

I have no qualms with non-violent activity games like Rock Band and such. I'm not very adept at those, but I think they're fun and it's great to see video games like these encouraging kids to move around and interact.

But the games that are most commonly played – and quite often by inappropriately-young children – are the gratuitously-violent and ultra-realistic first-person shooters. There are people I work with who actually laugh & boast with giddy pride about how proficient their Kindergarten-aged children are at games like Grand Theft Auto, Gears of War, and Call of Duty.

I believe there's a very serious risk that these games are desensitizing children to horrific and needless violence and gore. These aren’t the squiggly space aliens that we paid quarters to shoot 20 years ago – today’s video game opponents are wounded, show emotion, bleed, and die in convincingly realistic ways. Children are becoming acclimated to graphic carnage and violence the likes of which only a police officer or ER doctor would’ve previously ever been exposed to. It’s bad enough that this affects adults, but when children no longer are shocked by strongly-violent acts, what’s to deter them from engaging in those?

Maybe those types of video games are useful for training soldiers, but as entertainment for children? That’s just reprehensible!

Fri, 2009-09-25 05:35

Video games are not the devil, but that's a really fine line.

I agree with rodaniel in that there are some really horrible, violent games on the market and as parents it is our responsibility to monitor what our kids are exposed to. Just like we don't let our kids see inappropriately rated movies, we don't allow those types of games into our home. Luckily, my son is more into games like Rock Band or Wii Sports etc.

But playing video games is one of our favorite family activities to do. We all get together and take turns on Rock Band or American Idol Karaoke (my personal favorite), and laugh and laugh and really enjoy each other. In my view, those family game nights are really no different than all of us sitting down to play Monopoly together (which we do as well--gotta love those qualifiers).

@BeingSuper

Fri, 2009-09-25 06:43

My daughter is two, so it's a bit distressing that I am able to comment on this topic, but it speaks to how careful we'll have to be in the future. I sat her down on Fisher-Price.com (not sippin' the haterade, it's a great site!) so I could cook dinner, with a game that recites a letter, matches it with an animal and plays a sound when she keys a letter. She seemed to enjoy it, but I had no idea how much until she woke up the next morning and before climbing out of bed or even fully opening her eyes she said, "I please play my 'puter game now, Mama?"

That being said, we have a game system in the house, and I do like to rock the Guitar Hero every now and then. I hope that as she grows older we can treat video and computer games like a treat, not an expectation. I love what BeingSuper said about making gaming time family-time. When the games become isolating is when their messages (subconscious or otherwise) are more affecting.

Fri, 2009-09-25 15:59

We enjoy all sorts of games in our house, including video games, and my 6 yr old does play quite a bit. I don't place any limits and most days he plays less than an hour, but sometimes he goes a week without playing, and once in a while he plays for 6 hours straight. Personally, I don't see a problem with it. Games can be a great social outlet, as well as an exercise in problem-solving skills. Actually, as moms and women, I think we fail to understand how much they are getting out of it. The male brain is wired a little differently, and this seems like a manifestation of a (usually male) ability to hyperfocus on one thing, to work a problem over and over until it is mastered, to poke and play with and tweak something until it is perfect. (I see him apply the exact same mentality to Legos or writing or drawing or making videos or any of his other pursuits.) Personally, the repetitiveness of most video games drives me totally nuts. I definitely carry those (more typically female) traits of multitasking and versatillity. I will never get high score on anything or unlock 100% of the special crap on the Lego games because a video game is simply not important enough for me to invest my time in playing the same level over and over.

And, whoa! Gears of War? GTA? My kid's got no desire to play those things. The problem sounds like the parents are glorifying the violence in those games to their kids. Generally, 6 yr olds don't have a natural interest in shooting people in the face.

Sat, 2009-09-26 14:57

My husband grew up playing videogames. A lot. And he was also very into D&D with his friends. (That said, he didn't spend his entire childhood on the couch, he was also an active Boy Scout, etc etc.) When I met him in college, he spent most of his spare time playing video games.

Me? My parents were extremely restrictive on TV time, and on computer time. We never owned a game system. My father did get us a few computer games, but my mother hardly ever let us play them. I looked forward to babysitting as a teenager because I got to play with my charges' game systems when they went to bed.

End result? I simply picked up the habit when I got to college, and now both my husband and I are video game enthusiasts. But, so what? My husband also got his ph.d. in chemistry, and I'm now working on my own ph.d. Both parenting approaches resulted in pretty much the same thing.

So. Conclusion? It's not video games that are the devil, it's addiction, to any sort of activity. I think any person/child needs to learn to manage his/her time, whether it has to do with video games, or any other leisure activity. I like how both Alice and Asha mention that they set time or day limits on video games, just as any parent sets limits on tv hours, or sets a bedtime. There's a huge difference between seeing that a kid has an addiction, and simply giving into it. So I applaud you, Asha, for not simply yanking away the games from your son, and trying to teach him something about self-control.

Sun, 2009-09-27 12:35

My husband and I are total video game nerds. We've talked about how we would approach this because how do we set limits with our kids' video game usage when he's pounding the keyboard playing WoW and I'm on the Wii?

I love Alice's idea of just a full day of burn-out. I also think I would limit the number of games a child gets within a certain time period. And... I'm going to say I would not want my child playing a game like WoW online. There's another one that's about wizards that's along the same lines. They're endless games, it's a subscription so you'd have to pay for it and I just think they're more addictive and harder to limit.

Also violent games now are so violent they give ME nightmares. So that's another factor. Seriously, Gears of War? Try watching it for 20 min. in the dark and tell me you do not want to outfit your entire house with night lights.

As for if it's more of a boy thing than a girl thing... I think in the past it has definitely been more of a male thing but I foresee that changing mostly because video game makers are targeting girls and women now. See the Nintendo DS commercials. Since the makers are mostly men I personally don't think many of their games appeal to girls/women (my pet pony? BARF), but I can definitely see that changing. Professor Layton anyone? Animal Crossing? Statistically speaking, there are more women online playing games than men believe it or not. I believe the majority of the games are online gambling, but it's the same idea. Video game makers know this and are expanding their product line accordingly.

Tue, 2009-09-29 06:11