Gamertell

With the California violent videogame law recently being stopped, it’s no surprise that an article (it most likely ran on the Opinion/Editorial page) titled “How to protect kids from violent video games” would run this week in the San Jose Mercury News.

The article, written by founder and president of the National Institute on Media and the Family, David Walsh, does a pretty good of putting things in context including mention of the ESRB and retail stores’ efforts to keep kids from buying games beyond their age ratings.

Of course, with such a title, you’d think the article would offer more advice than background (6 fat paragraphs of background versus 4 medium-to-small sized paragraphs of advice). In a nutshell, here’s the advice that was given in the article (I’ll let you insert your own, “No Duhs.“):

• Follow the rating on the game’s packaging and look for the game’s descriptors. (Go ESRB!)
• Watch what your kids watch. Play what your kids play. (Well, now, that’s just fun).
• Limit the amount of screen time your child views (The article also indicated “the average child watches more than 44 hours of screen time per week,“ though no citation was given for that huge figure.

Maybe the basic advice is still the best but it seems there should be more to it than that. Where’s the proactive decision making with kids? Make them part of the process and not the victims.

As for limiting screen time, that just might become impossible. With more portable devices coming web- and TV-enabled - and allowing videos to be ported around - it’s impossible to keep kids from sharing videos or watching them on the school bus (unless, of course, you simply keep electronics out of their hands until they turn 18, and then they’ll just look over their friends’ shoulders). Besides, kids get into fist fights regardless of how much time they spend in front of a TV.

Of course, maybe the simple stuff just not sinking in for some parents. Maybe some parents are simply too busy (or too lazy) to really know what their kids are really playing and they need to be reminded of the simplest suggestions.

Even so, it only takes one kid with a copy of Manhunt for every other kid on the block to be exposed to it and you can really only blame one set of parents - or maybe just that one kid - for that. Sorry, but that simply cannot be stopped no matter how proactive you are. Become too protective, however, and you run the risk of your child becoming overly rebellious and even worse in the long run.

Read [Mercury News] Site [MediaWise]

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