Games and kids -> fully OK? part 2

Hi Guys,
Almost 3 years ago I started a thread called like this one, asking people whether it was fine to play GTA4 while my 2 year old boy was watching. I mean, he was watching because that was one of the games we played together, sometimes he would drive, crash, etc. I avoided fighting though, but GTA4 is still a violent game.
We kept playing other games, in general less violent than GTA4, but the thing is, violence is something inherent to most video games so it wasn´t easy. i.e. today one of my son´s favorite games is Rayman (Legends/origins - he is so good at it), which in a way is still violent.
Anyway, I wanted to comment this because something that happened the other day made me evaluate all this:
We were watching "Ralph the wrecker" which is a kid´s movie, and suddenly there was a violent scene on it. My son was very shocked; he got really affected by the scene (so I turned it off). The next week, I was playing “God of War: ascension” with a cousin, and of course we were not allowing our kids to see it. Then suddenly my son entered the room, and I let him watch for a bit, although it was a very scary and violent part of the game. I let him watch because he was so entertained, not afraid at all. I told him to go, but he told me he wanted to see Kratos cut the arm of the bad guy first... (by the way, my son is comparatively to other kids, very peaceful)
So then I got it: Me and my son play a lot of video games, but we don´t watch so much movies. He is used to video games, but not only that: He understands that video games are fake. But, he is not that sure about movies, that’s why he gets scared.
When I started this thread 3 years ago (my son is 5 now), several people argued that my son could get more violent for watching GTA4. What happened instead is that my son understood that GTA4 is only a game - not the reality. That didn´t happen with movies, because we don’t watch much TV.
Interesting, eh?

 

Nice, thoughtful post :thumbsup: I wonder if you've asked for your son's thoughts on this?

 

no fairly common in some households I would guess. That is our household but in reverse. we watch movies a lot here and neither my husband or myself game, so at a very young age we taught the kids that TV and movies are pretty fake and even explained basic biology/science to them to explain a few things better. but thank goodness in our case that also translated back into games where our kids would annoy their friends by calling many of the violent games " so fake its funny "

so here I am now a mother of 4 and all of which are normally very passive and have watched almost every violent action flic made ( including the most violent, the old Road Runner cartoons ) and have had access and played the violent games since they were barely able to hold a mouse or run a console.

I have to say I am more of a proponent to teaching the kids the difference from fake and reality and explain that games TV, Movies and cartoons are just make believe and completely entertainment. ( OK they do understand documentaries and history as well )

now do keep in mind EVERY kid is different too. some can not differentiate so well and it does mix together in their mind.

hmmmm I could ask one or two of the kids to post up their thoughts.

 

Thanks for the post. I have been thinking about this topic alot lately. My wife and I just had our first child this past fall. While it will be a little while until he is old enough to even comprehend the difference between a video game and a movie, I have to decide what I want to expose him to when.

When I was a kid video games were much different, I was playing dragons lair, mist, and star fox but I also played Doom. I was always much more afraid of movies than video games when I was little (saw Alien when I was ten and it messed me up) but now with the current generation of games I didn't know if that line was getting blurred. Your post gives me the idea that children, even little ones, can compartmentalize reality and fantasy better then I thought, although there is still some gradation.

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well congratulations to you and your wife on the little guy Minerva. you are in for quite a learning experience ( I still am after almost 20 years )

 

Thanks! He is only 3 months and right now I can't imagine him any other way. We are definitely in for a ride.

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I think the important part is being there yourself.

 

x 1000. I can never stress that enough

 

I think letting kids watch or play games that are meant for adults is wrong.

The reason is simple, kids are kids. We don't let them smoke, have , watch or violent movies why should we let them play/watch games that are not meant for them. Some kids might understand that is a game but most will not. Plus in most adult games there are concepts that are hard to explain to a kid (try explaing Hate, "dad why that men kills only pink ppl" "Cuz he hate pink" "Why dad" "Cuz pink is a bad" "Why" "Kid are you stupid ? This is from your mother side")

 

I don't play violent games when my kids are watching. Very cartoony violence is okay (Muramasa: Demon Blade and Okami both have plenty of sword-swinging, but it's not like God of War stuff), but I don't want a four-year-old and a seven-year-old to see people shot with realistic guns, see people dismembered in God of War/Ryse style, etc. I personally would rather not desensitize them to that sort of imagery at this age. I'm not saying I won't let them play Call of Duty or whatever when they're older, but I don't think either of them is really "ready" for that right now. Just my choice for my family; not judging anyone else's decision for their families.

Family video game playing consists entirely of Mario Kart Wii right now. And so far, everyone is happy with that (myself included; that game is ridiculously fun).

 

I think that is how I am going to role when my little one gets older and I have to agree with Meaker 100%, half the battle is just showing up.

Never thought I would get a Wii.

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My kids are now 5 and 6 and they like Rayman, I don't find it that violent, and it's very much a cartoon. They sometimes watch me play BF4 (but with my headphones on to avoid the sound) and find it funny how guys go flying in the air and my kids even say "Dad, you die a lot"... lol.

I think each situation is different, and up to the parents. Other than the obvious you dumb idiot things (like giving a 3 year old a loaded gun kind of stupid), I've learned that you can't judge or recommend anything to a parent without understanding the whole situation. My thoughts are it's best to be introduced to the more questionable things by their parents than their peers especially at a younger age, because parents are wiser and all knowing and you can explain it to them the way you WANT them to understand it. Of course I wouldn't subject my kids to a Halloween horror marathon session, but I might sit with them through a mildly scary show (like a goosebumps episode or even some Scooby Doo episodes) and use it as a lesson of how things aren't always what they seem.

But yes I'm realizing that just taking the time to be there for them and be their mentor is more than half the battle. They trust you and gain confidence through you teaching them things that they might otherwise either find on their own and not understand, or through a less than desirable peer. I lived a sheltered childhood and it has followed me through my life, and don't want my kids to be mentally scarred by the shock of real life when they discover it at a much later age.

 

<iframe width='420' height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/mB6fq9Aadwk" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>
Counter-Strike For Kids (Machinima) - YouTube

 

you need to put away the games man..

if your already thinking it, you already know the answer.... don't fool yourself to make yourself feel better.....


honestly, you need to be playing with the kid outside, not inside watching dad play games..

 

I believe in everything in moderation. Kids who are offered sips of wine with dinner are less likely to binge-drink when they get older, and kids who learn to play Wii in moderation and learn how to walk away after a half-hour are less likely to end up binging on MMOs for eighteen hours per day when they get older. At least, that's my suspicion and my philosophy.

 

So you think you should spend every waking moment outside? Seriously?

 

Well, you could start by saying:
Son, I know you are not stupid, this is only a game, it is not real, you can tell, because real people are not pink.
Kids are way smarter than you think....

I think you are being judgemental. I play with my kid outside all the time, and when we play videogames, now he plays more than I do (I mostly watch/help/laugh) .
Somthing else: you HAVE to think everything throughfully, otherwise you are a follower, and you are teaching your kid to be so. Second, I guess you live under a very nice weather. In other parts of the world it might be cold outside sometimes, or rainy, or too sunny.

Well, but that is exactly my point: Despite being exposed to some violent videogames, my son WAS NOT desensitized, otherwise he wouldn´t be afraid of that kid´s movie (which violencewise it is like Rayman). On contraire, seeing him shocked by the movie tells me he is still very sensitive to violence. So, how is that he is not sensitive to violent video games? The take home lesson is that at least in this case, desensitization to real violence (or movie violence) has nothing to do with desensitization to videogame violence. Hence, this has nothing to do with violence, it has to do with what kids consider is real or not. And at least in this case, my son knows this very well (on videogames - not movies).
I think this has to do with the fact that while you can see a violent "aesthetic" in a movie or videogame, you are not seeing real violence, and if you are used to know that that is only esthetic, then you just don´t take it seriously anymore. And as I said before, kids are way smarter than you think.

 

I would agree that most people, kids included, can differentiate cartoon violence from real life violence. And as far as our technology has gone, we still don't have characters that look anywhere close to real life. But what happens when things progress so that you can control characters that look exactly like what you see on TV, with real human faces? What if, with Kinect-like technology, you can actually simulate killing actions such as stabbing and slitting instead of pressing buttons? This question will become more curious when technology advances.

 

More important to consider is that video games (and movies and TV) are simply imitating real life.

You can hide the violence, the hatred, and all the awful things you want from kids. You can close them up in their room and never let them see anything.

The problem is, the world they live in is full of the same things.

Taking them outside to play runs the risk of seeing all sorts of violence. From a compound fracture from someone they are playing sports with, to witnessing awful things that happen in the real world.

One example:
My brother and I were outside playing with friends pretty much in our back yard. Our mom was home making us lunch and our dad at work. Across the street, a man and his wife were having a fight. The fight degraded from an argument, to yelling at each other to the man beating his wife in plain sight of everyone. She was quickly bloodied, and her screams echoed in the entire neighborhood. The kids ran inside to tell their moms and the police were called. After HOURS of this going on (off and on beatings) without a single police officer showing up, the moms called their husbands. My dad was one of the men who came home from their jobs to handle this. My dad along with a handful of others went over to their house and stopped the beatings until the paramedics showed up. The police showed up around dinner time. (5-6 hours later)
My mom and dad had a long talk with us about what happened and how it was important for the strong to protect the weak and that good people had to do the best they could under bad situations.

This was reality... not some show. My brother and I were both quite young. One of the kids in the neighborhood we were playing with was 4.
While our parents took us inside, we could all still hear her screams.

How useful was protecting my brother and I from violent video games when real life was oh so much worse?

 

As for movies, have kids watch the making of specials and the special effects behind the scenes. Then they can see how it is all fake. It will remove some of the movie magic though.

Either way, we know violent movies, games, or even music, do not make violent people. People have argued that music was a bad influence for a hundred years. Or this or that was going to currupt society.... This is an age old discussion.

 

While I don't think people who argue "oh well why don't you play with your kids outside instead of sitting on the couch playing vidya games" actually mean they want you to be out there 24/7, they do have a point. But it's not just "outside", it's taking yourself and your children away from video games/television altogether, whether it be active (playing outside) or creative (building a pillow fort/roleplaying). I've been doing quite a bit of babysitting for the last few years and I can definitely see the perks of sticking your kid in front of a screen: their attention is grabbed pretty much indefinitely while you can handle other household business or you can sit with them and relax.

The key thing, which has already been mentioned, is moderation, but I think subject matter is significant too. I would never give anyone under 10 a violent video game to play or a violent movie to watch. I grew up with Mario, Tetris and sports games. I feel like those are perfectly fine in moderation.

As to the whole "do violent video games desensitize children/make them more aggressive or short-tempered" argument, I don't know. I guess there is research out there that shows violent video games do not have these effects, but is there any harm in waiting until they mature a little before exposing them to the subject matter?

 

No disrespect, but I think these kinds of things are personal and really reserved for parents and their kids to handle. I think the OP really was just reporting his status on what had happened. Good info.

Babysitting and parenting are not even in the same spectrum. Before I had kids I had all sorts of ideals and concepts on how I wanted to raise my kids. While you can stick to it partially, most of it went out the window. The reality of it is that you do what you deem appropriate and best for you and your family. Kids are not just these blank slates that you mold, they actually have personality and attitude coming out of their mother's belly from day one. Everyone's life has different pressures and requirements. While it would be ideal to keep your kids away from TV and video games, it's only a remote possibility if you have at least one parent dedicated to the cause to keep the kids entertained while other tasks get done. Sure as they get older and can self entertain, it's a bit easier, but my kids can't do many projects without help from dad every few minutes.

My kids spend quite a bit of time with the computer and TV, but they also spend a lot of time outside throughout the spring, summer, fall months with nice weather. Parents sacrifice a lot of their time for their kids. Sometimes they need to do things that keep them going and happy, so if it's video games or TV or fixing a car, or playing card games... there's no reason they can't include their kids too.

 

Nature vs. nurture is a very tricky debate to navigate when there are parents in the discussion, especially when there's a mix of parents and non-parents, since opinions can feel (and be) really personal. Those who are in the thick of it know that it's less about ideals and more about reality. Those who are on the outside looking in, on the other hand, have a lot of great ideas and usually lack the wisdom to realize that the reality of parenting is often too messy to implement those ideas. As someone who will likely be getting in on the parenting game within a couple years, I'm excited to try to raise a kid, and terrified whenever I think of certain students of mine who have brilliant, excellent parents and teachers whose best efforts and intentions just can't overcome some bad rolls of the genetic dice.

 

Eh, I'll throw in my two cents. Though a disclaimer: I'm just a college student, no kids, though back in high school I used to watch the kids of family friends every so often.

I find the whole "violent video games create violent people" claim to be nonsense. The biggest problem with the argument, imo, is that it makes the classic "correlation does not mean causation" mistake that plenty of flawed studies make. I've yet to see any case in the news where the cause of a violent kid/adult is directly related to playing these sorts of games, and absolutely nothing else. Usually, there's a underlaying mental disorder, sub-par upbringing, drugs, or some other cause behind the problem. And besides, violent crime has actually been on a decline since the 90s or so (one possible explanation is the removal of lead in gasoline, so I read), and the long-term trends from past and present is that it's overall always decreasing: A crime puzzle: Violent crime declines in America « The Berkeley Blog

Anyway, just a personal example, though take it however you like:

I grew up around pretend violence throughout my childhood (games, movies, TV, horseplay, etc.). Back when I was around the age of OP's kids (or HTWingNut's), I didn't play many games at all, violent or otherwise, but I was no stranger to the like of Rambo, military movies, Die Hard, so on and so forth. I understood as a child that it's just acting and nobody actually gets hurt. As I grew up and began to develop an understanding of right/wrong, my dad made it very clear to us that while it's fine to play with toy guns and the like (such as virtual duck hunt and other gun-based games), it would be very wrong to use actual guns in incorrect ways and make it very clear what the consequences of such actions could be (killing someone, sending someone to a hospital, etc.). Mind you, he had a pretty sizable collection of rifles, shotguns, and pistols, not to mention knives and the like. I was still interested in learning how to use them though (as a sport, not as a criminal tool) and he'd take me out to the firing range to shoot guns back when I was 8 or so; safely using these weapons can be pretty fun, and it was a sort of bonding experience between son/father. Later on, when I would go to summer camp for a few years, the same sort of thing happened with archery.

Now, to video games. Back when I was young (PS1 and early PS2 days), most of the violent games we'd have were of the cartoon variety (Racket and Clank, for example) or other forms of violence against non-human things (Ace Combat, mech combat games, etc.). IIRC, the first "realistic" violent game I played was GTA Vice City maybe a year or two after it came out (my mom bought it for me when I asked politely). Fun game, I had a blast running over virtual people, shooting them, doing weird stuff towards them (helicopter lawnmover, landing cars on them, etc.). Then over the years I'd (and my younger brother) buy/receive more violent games and enjoy them. Video game violence never really phased either of us, and I can't really understand how a normal child would be either. We never would steal our mom's car and go to town and "have fun" with it or anything like that at all. My sister was really into horror movies (Saw, etc.) and she's never had any urges to hang anyone from meat hooks or the like either. To me, at least, playing these sort of violent games was more of a stress release than anything else; take out all my stress/anger/whatever on a virtual target to get it out of my system, instead of taking out that stress/anger on a real thing/person.

Whenever I had to watch over a kid(s), I wouldn't hide my games/movies from them, especially if they were something like 5+ years old (old enough to walk around and have a conversation with). Sometimes a kid will walk up to me while I'm playing my games and just watch as I get into a shootout with cops in GTA (or whatever). They had parents who raised them well as well, and they had a decent understanding of right/wrong, so it was never really a problem. If they get scared, I'd stop or they'll walk away, but I've never had that problem with a kid (they understand that it's not real). And even when the violence was "real" (Rambo, etc.), it was still never a problem. The only thing I ever had to check myself on was cursing (because generally, parents don't like you dropping f-bombs around their kids).

Kids really aren't some stupid lump of carbon-based matter. As others have said, they're pretty smart (relatively-speaking) and if you treat them with respect as they get older (as in, eventually you'll have to give them a better answer than "Because I said so"), things will be okay. Raise kids responsibly and more than likely they'll be responsible kids/adults; vice versa, raise kids poorly and you get bad kids/adults as a result. My parents probably had a tougher time than most as not only did they have three kids, but I also had to deal with having a mental disorder growing up (early detection and treatment can do wonders!). And yet, despite that and my love for fake violence, I'm a non-violent, responsible, well-mannered young adult who is completing a BS degree at a 4yr university with a good GPA. More importantly, I've never committed a violent crime in my life, and very likely never will. My sister's also at university, and my younger brother will very likely be as well once he reaches that age.

Sheltering a kid from all this would probably turn out to be a horrible idea, as KernalPanic mentioned. One day, you're going to have to let your kids go out into the real world out on their own, and distancing them away from what goes on in the real world doesn't sound like a good plan imo. My parents didn't pretend that the world was full of rainbows and unicorns at all, and it wasn't like our neighborhood or town was perfect. We've had our car shot up at least once, and home broken into at least once, and of course there's tragedies (9/11, car accidents, shootings, the like). My parents work in the medical field and where I live currently (since 2005) is a major medical town, so seeing blood isn't new to me at least. Adding up all the violence in media, medical stuff, school stuff (the first high school I went to was Gangbanger Central, and the second wasn't that much better), I guess one could call me desensitized to that sort of thing, but it doesn't necessarily make me more prone to committing violence.

Just my own personal theory, but blaming violent media for the outcome of a child's or young adult's violent behavior is just an excuse for bad/absent parenting. If I ever have kids, I'd probably take the same approach as OP: letting them sit down with me as I watch violent movies or play violent games, provided that they understand that it's not real and can handle it. Teach them personal responsibility and help them in their behavioral, educational, and social development as they grow up. Thoughtfully answer life questions when they come up. Spend lots of time with them (be it playing games with them, or tossing around a football outside, vacations, whatever).