Irresponsibility does my head

i have. i know 1 10 year old, maybe he's 11 now, who has a stray bullet stuck in his leg because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time when a gang came through and opened fire. i know many others who are afraid of even playing in a park because of that type of shit. i know baseball fields, soccer pitches, bball courts that have used up needles right in the open, people using right in the open. i played soccer on a field where the homeless slept and did drugs in the open and a police station was right down the street.

i'm not too worried about a game making kids go batshit crazy. they see enough of that shit in real life

 

Yeah, my parents made a weak attempt at trying to not let me watch R rated movies, but they were too busy with their own shit to really pay attention, so I watched them all anyway. I think that watching them has only made me grow as an individual and mature with much more haste than my peers.

 

hell yes.

 

Boxing and Martial Arts all teach discipline and control while sill allowing kids to be 'violent'. Sports can be great for channeling aggression and anger, but most have rules and also teach a sense of right from wrong. I don't think that somebody playing at running over women and kids, stealing cars and beating people up with a baseball bat can really teach anything.

 

I didn't say video games WILL automatically do that to every single kid if they play them, I said they CAN do it to a kid, meaning they have the potential to damage a child when they're not mature enough to deal with the violence or to separate it from the reality.

And sorry, parents who buy their kids violent video games very often are the exact problem for troubled kids because very often these are the parents who don't care enough where their kid spends their time, with who and doing what.

I totally agree with Rubin about educating your child about what's right and what's wrong, however how many parents do you think actually go through that trouble when they buy their kids this stuff?

 

Oh my god I wasnt allowed to watch Ace Venture when it came out.

 

Sure, I agree... all of those things are great and should be encouraged. I myself hope that my kids would be intelligent enough to not spend hours playing GTA. If a kid is interested in sports, then awesome... but if he isn't, you really can't force it upon him. Plus, those activities encourage a sense of competition which I dislike.

Anyhow, that's all beyond the point. I'm not really arguing for GTA here, but I sure am arguing against the fact that it actually corrupts our youth. It's just a simulation of real life. It develops imagination.

 

That's how I feel about it too, but at the same time Im still a child at heart

 

I would like to think that plenty actually do, even though I'm certainly wrong. Yet you still cannot blame the video game on this, or make a generalization about every parent who buys GTA for their kids. Who knows, maybe the parents you saw in the store actually told the kids that they should run around picking up hookers.

 

I'm a million years old at heart. Most of the time I feel like I'm observing this world from space and that my involvement in it is simply some kind of trivial daydream. I feel like everything makes perfect sense, I feel the balance... it makes life a tad dull when there's nothing really left to discover spiritually.

 

Maybe I didn't make it obvious enough in my first post but I'm not against GTA or any other video game for that matter. Hell, I played GTA this afternoon and found it kinda fun.

And I really disagree with gta being a simulation of real life. It's not what real life is, it's one very extreme fragment of it. And that's fine because it's meant for adults who can understand that and separate it from the real world, however I'm not so sure every kid can do that. And THAT is why you need parental guidance.

 

I haven't played GTA4 but I can't imagine that it shows many of the nicer aspects of life. Like KB said, it's not a simulation of real life.

 

Yeah, it's just an extreme fraction of real life.

...and parental guidance does help.

I guess that I just trust kids' judgement today. I'm sure that 99% of 10 year olds in modern countries can tell you that murder is wrong, that drugs are bad, that prostitutes have herpes, and so on. It seems to be common sense, even for a 10 year old, in our age of information.

You don't hear of kids playing GTA and then going out and shooting bitches for a reason.

 

im with kozmic on this one. iwouldnt have bothered saying anything probably, but i do think that over exposure to violence when a person is too young/irresponsible to understand it or wrap their head around it can lead to some problems. obviously not for every kid, there are lots out there who are mature enough to handle that crap. there are also lots who arent. its ultimately up to the parent to determine what is and isnt appropriate for them.

 

First off, I am a parent who does not buy that type of game for her kids. They get rated E only.

This is the part I would be concerned about. The fact that they are underage and their parents may not know what they are getting ahold of. It is like buying booze or porn.

How true. I am surprised some of them even bother to feed their kids.

 

True say. If I was a parent I would not stand in a checkout and openly 'buy' porn for my child. If he/she was old enough to have their own private access to the net then they can (if their devious) find a working torrent and download the game to play.

You can't cover a child's eyes from corruption and perversion but as a parent you can at least set standards. Buying adult material for minors to interact with is slack and perverse. By doing so your basically saying "I don't give a damn about your mental state".

I think kids need an environment that they can call home. Somewhere safe and decent. If they drink from the 'devil's cup' (which many intentionally or unintentionally do), they need a positive state that questions their actions. Isn't that one of the core standards of parenting IYO?

 

I don't think it's appropriate for children, obviously.

On the other hand, I agree with Pavel. Kids aren't going to be influenced by negative media.

Should I keep my kids from reading the paper when they're ten? Remember that story someone posted the other day about the woman being locked up and raped by her father in Austria for like 20 years? I find that much less appropriate for kids. Should I let them read history books?

Where do we draw that line? I'd probably not let me kids play it, but my kids wouldn't be harmed by playing it, because their going to grow with strong morals and values. And if your confident in the strong morals and values you've instilled in your kids, then it's pretty hard for a game to usurp that.

I think the problem comes when people let the media raise their kids, rather then the media the kids do see..

 

thank you!

 

I think if video games affect the kids to the point that it is unsafe for them and people around them, its the parents fault for not raising them well and attending to their needs, not the video game's.

 

Very well said.

I especially agree with your last statement. Parents lettin the media raise their kids has been a huge problem. Yet, it goes beyond the parents and into society itself. This world forces some people to work 12 hours a day, without ever gettin to see their children... they have nothing to do but to let the media take care of them, it's sort of a salvation for some.