On Video Games, The Jury Is Out And Confused
from the good-or-bad? dept
Continuing the popular debate here over whether or not video games are bad for children, the NY Times has gone out and asked parents how they deal with the question. Certainly, the research on the subject is completely mixed. Some say it’s bad for kids, while others point out the benefits of video games. Of course, in the end, I still think it’s a parenting issue. Bringing up a child with a good sense of right and wrong, responsibility, and learning their own limits probably goes a lot farther in having a good kid than whether or not you let them play video games. One thing that’s pretty clear in the article is that if one parent prevents their kids from playing video games, they simply go to their friend’s house to play the same video games anyway. Outright banning of video games clearly isn’t effective – so aren’t parents better off communicating with their children so that they understand the difference between what’s on the screen and what happens in real life?
Comments on “On Video Games, The Jury Is Out And Confused”
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I’m probably a bad parent, but I let my 9 year play pretty much any game he wants within reason. Obviously, he’s not playing GTA3 (that is reserved for me after he is in bed!) but I don’t have any issue with a lot of the games that are T rated for violence. Some of the war games have gotten so realistic that they are educational now. He can ID most of the ships at Pearl HArbor and where they were in the harbor just from repeatedly playing a Pearl Harbor vide game.