Games and Television :: How Closely Are You Watching Your Children?
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The majority of parents, I would hope all parents, will tell you that they want nothing but the best for their children. They want their children to grow up and become respectful, hard-working, and honest adults that are able to find happiness and success with anything that they do.
Not many parents will tell you that they hope their child is having intercourse before the age of 16, or that they become pregnant before reaching the age of majority. Likewise, few parents envision their child turning into a physically aggressive adult that lead a life of violence.
So what does that have to do with television and video games?
Well, according to a study in the journal Pediatrics, there is an increased chance of teen pregnancy among children that watch television programs with risky sexual behavior by teens.
According to the study, researchers recruited adolescents aged 12 to 17 and surveyed them three times between 2001 and 2004, asking about television viewing habits, sexual behavior and pregnancy. Among 718 teenagers, there were 91 pregnancies. The adolescents who watched the most sexy television were at double the risk of becoming, or causing, a pregnancy compared to the adolescents watching the fewest such programs.
With regard to video games, another study in the journal indicates that children that play violent video games show an increase in physically aggressive behavior.
Aggressiveness in children is often associated with violence later on in life, meaning violent video games may pose a significant risk to our children. How many violent games do you think the school bully is playing?
Considering the above information, let me ask you a question.
How closely are you monitoring what your children watch and play?
Obviously there is a line that must be drawn, as there is only so much that parents can realistically do to prevent their children from playing violent video games or watching racy television programs.
Are your children permitted to have televisions in their room?
Is access to the Interweb allowed behind closed doors?
What type of video games are they playing?
Do you know what they are doing when over at a friends house?
That last one is a tricky situation, and is part of my motivation in writing this post. Like it or not, different parents have different rules when it comes to what their children can and cannot do. As a parent, it is your job to become acquainted with the parents of your child’s friends and get a feeling for where those boundaries exist in their house.
For instance, we know that one of our oldest son’s friends has very little parental supervision when it comes to the video games that are permitted. This other boy is permitted to play games that have an “M” rating.
Sorry, that doesn’t fly in our house.
Since we cannot control what takes place at a friends house, we have learned that there are some friends that are welcome to come to our house and play, but our kids will not be permitted to play at the friends house due to rules that we are not comfortable with.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not one that believes that video games or sexual television programs are to blame for the problematic behavior of children.
Actually, I believe that the children playing these games and watching these programs have a larger problem - parents that are not involved in their lives.
Talk to your children.
Explain things to them when they have questions.
Be involved in their lives; set rules and boundaries with regard to what is acceptable.
These are the things that I believe will have a far greater impact on your child, as they will then have a better understanding of the consequences surrounding things like violent video games or television programs that push the envelope.
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When I was growing up, things were too strict, I felt. So with our oldest who just turned 8, we give her a little more lee-way and put some of the responsibility on her shoulders.
Not to get too long winded in a comment, but regarding video games, she doesn’t like anything that’s not kid-friendly because, quite frankly, she’s like me and when she plays a video game she doesn’t want to spent an hour learning how to play. Video game time is precious so she wants to be able to pick up that controller and be on her merry way!
With movies and TV, we don’t have cable TV but we do buy some series on DVD (Friends, Scrubs, Simpsons, etc). Some of the material in Friends is borderline, in my opinion, for kids but our daughter is very mature for her age and we have a very open Q&A policy in our home. If she sees something she doesn’t understand, she can ask and we’ll answer her as much as we can. She recognizes that some behavior in TV shows, which are designed to depict “real life,” isn’t smart or acceptable in our home.
Movies are a different issue. When she was 3 or 4 my in-laws saw fit to let her watch Lord of the Rings movies with them. So, from a very young age she was exposed to fantasy-type movie violence. I was not a happy camper. Something interesting happened as a cause of that, though: that violence doesn’t freak her out or make her a more aggressive child. The rub is that animated violence, like in The Lion King, scares the bejeezus out of her. Somewhere, there became a disconnect where she knew movies with fighting by people in costumes was pretend and fake, however, any cartoon violence confuses her, I think, and part of her thinks the daddy lion really did get killed.
We have let her watch things younger than some other parents, such as Harry Potter movies, Pirates of the Carribean, Iron Man, and so forth, where with some families the movie action/violence would upset them.
My wife and I will still pre-watch a movie to make sure it’s still appropriate for our daughter (if there’s any doubt to begin with) and we have had no issues with telling her she can see it when she’s older.
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We keep things in our home under control, overall.
Recently I’ve discovered OpenDNS as an excellent way to keep tabs on what web site are visited by my kids (13 and 5). As they are enrolled in a cyber school, the oldest often has exclusive access to his PC, but there are no ‘locked’ doors where the Internet is concerned.
The oldest does have a TV in his room, but presently has only a DVD & VCR only; we’ll get him cable, eventually, and we’ll review appropriate parental controls when we get there.
We’re pretty involved in getting to know the parents of the boys’ friends, and as of yet we’ve not encountered the problems with video games you’ve mentioned. When there are M rated games, the parents know we wouldn’t approve, and they make it clear to their kids they aren’t to be played around our kid. The parents have not expressed a problem with our request, and in one case has told us they will discuss with their spouse our reasoning, and may do likewise with their own kid.
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I am glad to read the last part where you say you’re not blaming it on the movies and video games even though thats how most of the post sounds…I agree that it’s more about involvement and the parents than about what games and such that the kids are engaged in. I actually just realized and interesting paradox that I might have to post about…
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Some parents’ theory is, their kids is going to be at their friend’s places, and you know at some point they will be shown something that might be seen as inappropriate anyway, so it’s better to just show the kids the stuff at home so the parents can be there to explain it. I don’t necessarily agree with that 100%, but I can’t deny that it does have some merits.
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