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!

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

More a boy issue than a girl issue. Yes but not exclusively. We do know a family that has girl gamers. The word that goes along with video games in our house is balance. Asha to be honest in our house if my son pulled the lounging on the couch saying "is it time yet" that would earn him a video game time out. Sometimes we just need to reset our priorities and usually we accomplish that by taking a break for a minimum of a week. The longest break was two months mostly because after the first month they forgot about playing video games. We regularly cut back on video games and for me computer time sometimes for specific projects and sometimes just because we've gotten sucked so far in we are forgetting to do things outside of the tv/computer/video game realm. But when the answer is yes go play video games it's a free for all much like Alice described. These days I am more concerned about content than playing because we've spent two years establishing good habits with how much we play and what happens when we need to "reset" ourselves. What was interesting is our recent conversations with friends about what to get four our upcoming birthday boy who is turning 8. Ninety percent mentioned a video game or video game related item. Which made me wonder if "Video Gaming" when it is a problem is one that is related to the child or really to the parent?

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.

oh my i feel relived. this is our dirty little secret-the way i got my 4 yr old to stay in his bed all night was to let him play wii with his dad every night between bath and bed (like 30 minutes). he plays lego batman and indiana jones and he is already OBSESSED. every morning he comes into my room at 630ish and says "mommy i slept in my bed, so i get wii right?" glad i am not the only one who allows it

I absolutely agree, Rodaniel--those games are way, way too violent. We're a strictly kids'-games-only household.

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.

As a latch-key kid with a very challenging older sibling, I was raised by channel 56. That could be a contributing factory to my personal history that includes a tendency to addictive behaviors, mainly excessive "screen-sucking". So when I first became a parent, we opted to be the "weird family" rather than the "constantly at war" family. That means for my child no TV at all, extremely limited movies, and (so far at age 8) making the kiddy table at the Apple store maybe twice a year the full extent of our exposure to videogames. We're careful not to judge other people's approaches and choices, or judge the screen experience in any way. We just opted to spend our limited time on this earth differently. For us, meaning everyone in my family, this arrangement feels really, really good. Truly! Your mileage may vary.

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.