Associated Press
10-07-06
Knowing kids' video games can eliminate fears
Ratings may not be best way to gauge age-appropriateness
By Amy Lorentzen, Associated Press
AMES, Iowa -- Moms and dads, crack your knuckles, stretch your wrists and
hunker down in front of the television or computer monitor -- it's time to confront
the monsters, villains and other baddies lurking in your children's video games.
Craig Anderson, an Iowa State University psychologist, says parents need to
do more than consider a game's age-based rating before putting it into the hands
of children. They actually need to play the game, he says, or watch as it's
demonstrated.
"If you have a child who is going to be playing a lot of video games, as a parent
you need to be paying very close attention to what's in the game," he says.
What to watch
• Play the game yourself, or have someone demonstrate it for you.
• Watch for these red flags: game portrays violence frequently; rewards it; treats
it humorously; ignores or downplays nonviolent solutions; or omits the realistic
consequences of violence.
• Be an involved citizen/consumer: If you learn a retailer is selling violent games
to children, complain to the owner or manager. If the retailer is doing a good job
screening sales or rentals of violent games, thank and support them by buying
nonviolent video games.
Some video games are "wonderful teaching tools," while others send the wrong
message and can lead to aggressive behavior in kids, Anderson says. His book
"Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents" (Oxford University
Press), co-written with Doug Gentile and Katherine Buckley, is due out in
January.
Anderson is among researchers who say there is a clear link between repeated
exposure to violent video games and aggression in children. Last year, the
American Psychological Association said video-game violence was unhealthy for
children and called on the industry to cut back.
The entertainment industry has long insisted there's no evidence the violent
games do harm. Patricia Vance, president of the Entertainment Software Rating
Board, says most parents use the age-based ratings and find them "effective and
useful." Parents are involved in buying games 83 percent of the time, she said.
"The idea that parents are helpless is just the wrong picture to paint," Vance said.
Yet it can be difficult for parents to master video games, Anderson says. A selfproclaimed gamer "before the current crop of programmers probably were out of
diapers," he says even he is no longer proficient at the new games.
Parents can ask for demonstrations from store personnel, he suggests, or go
online to organizations such as the National Institute on Media and the Family for
reviews.
To evaluate a game, he says, parents should determine whether it involves
characters trying to harm others, and if that behavior happens frequently. Is the
harm rewarded? Portrayed as humorous? Are nonviolent solutions offered? Are
they less fun than the violent ones? Are realistic consequences of violence
portrayed?
If two or more of the answers are "yes," Anderson advises parents to consider
alternatives.
"There are lots of other games that don't have violence in them that are equally
entertaining, and from a societal view, more healthy," he says.
Parents also can send a message to the industry by complaining to retailers who
sell violent games or who flout industry guidelines by selling mature- and teenrated games to younger kids.
Blois Olson, a spokesman for the National Institute on Media and the Family,
which examines the impact of electronic media, hopes Anderson's book will help
"educate parents, teachers, educators and other researchers. And, frankly, the
people who need to pay more attention to the research is the industry itself."
In one study Anderson cites, children were randomly assigned violent and
nonviolent children's-rated games. They were later given what they thought was
an opportunity to deliver noise blasts from a computer to someone with whom
they were competing in another room. The children who had played the violent
games delivered blasts that were 45 percent louder than the other group.
Anderson, who has a grown son and a daughter in high school, says the ESRB's
ratings system can be a jumping-off point but is no substitute for wise parenting.
That includes making nonviolent entertainment available and limiting computer
time.
"A couple of hours a week -- that's probably not gonna have a huge impact on
how they grow up," he says. "But unfortunately, the average boy in the United
States ... is playing something like 13 to 14 hours a week."