Here’s a fun editorial from the Calgary Herald: Killing time with killing games.
Children, if you ask me, were meant to sit at the kitchen table wearing smocks and painting whatever inspires innocent imaginations. They were designed to run free in forests (or the neighbour’s backyard) and fashion bows out of sticks. They were meant to climb into summer hammocks and giggle for hours on end with friends.
Heh ya. If they’re GIRLS. And it’s 1970. In the suburbs. Given those parameters, I’m down for that. Let’s wear smocks and run in forests and make bows and giggle.
Demonizing video games is fun! And easy to do!
This is what I don’t understand with all these stories about young children and teens addicted to video games: are all these addicted kids employed? Did they buy the consoles and the PCs and the games, and, are they paying for the subscription fees and internet connections?
That was rhetorical. Don’t email me the answer.
Parenting is so easy in third-person view. I really don’t see what all the fuss is about.
UPDATE: Truly the Calgary Herald does live in the past. Since they lock up content behind a registration after 7 days, I’ll cut/paste the editorial for you:
Killing time with killing games
Video game addiction isn’t child’s play
Kim Gray, Calgary Herald
Published: Monday, June 04, 2007
Modern technology and I aren’t exactly the best of friends. I like my fountain pen. Despite e-mail’s popularity, I prefer handwriting letters to pals who live abroad. Digital cameras haven’t won me over. Not yet, anyway.
There. I’ve admitted up front that I’m likely not going to be objective about the topic I’m about to tackle.
Confession complete. Can I now say that I despise every manner of techno-toy being marketed to our youth these days? Nintendo DS. PlayStation. Xbox. Game Boy. Name your gadget and I will tell you unequivocally that there is very little redeeming about the thing.
Children, if you ask me, were meant to sit at the kitchen table wearing smocks and painting whatever inspires innocent imaginations. They were designed to run free in forests (or the neighbour’s backyard) and fashion bows out of sticks. They were meant to climb into summer hammocks and giggle for hours on end with friends.
Children, if you ask me, were not meant to hide out in the depths of the basement playing PlayStation games (with violent or not violent material) for endless periods– consistently tuning out life and becoming quarrelsome when told their time’s up.
Teenagers aren’t meant to, as did the 17-year-old nephew of a friend of mine, physically threaten their parents when it’s decided Xbox is no longer welcome in their home.
“After the purchase of the Xbox, he developed blatantly horrible behaviour. He became rude and disrespectful. His parents felt that their son had totally disappeared,” I’m told. This family has yet to resolve the conflict and the parents involved feel as though they’ve been taken hostage by something they were completely unprepared for.
Another parent of teen boys heavily into Xbox — particularly a popular game called Halo 2, which revolves around humans engaged in a war against “genocidal alien races” — says, “No one really knows what’s going on. There is no precedent set for how many hours a teenager should sit in front of the screen and play these killing games. Most parents don’t have a clue what their kids are watching.”
A few years ago, a friend complained that her seven-year-old son was addicted to Game Cube. She knew he was addicted because he’d get up at 6 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays in order to play. He’d give up other “creative ways to enjoy his time,” she says, adding, “we realized that his attitude was generally grumpy towards everything and everyone for hours after we made him turn the game off.”
Today, she says her son still likes to play these games, but his screen time — the term for any time spent in front of a computer, a television or an electronic game — is curtailed to 30 minutes a day.
“Also, we get out of the house, far away from the lure of Nintendo and do things as a family. We joined a really great family-oriented gym that we frequent lots for swimming, bowling, and skating,” she says.
Granted, not everyone becomes addicted to these games. According to my brother, my nephew is not obsessed with gaming even though he has access. “Some kids are obsessed with it. Each child is affected differently,” he remarks. I know that playing these games in a controlled environment can be positive when it comes to problem solving and logic. I know they can be fun. I know this is the age of technology and information and even I have to get with the program.
… and page 2 is lost to the ages because I can’t find it in the Google cache and I forgot to Furl this crap and even registered users can only go back 7 days in their archives and how much do I hate their newspaper now? PLENTY! Here’s my summary, from memory: page 2 was more bla bla about her friends who are raising spoiled gamer brats while throwing their hands in the air, shouting, “WHY??? WHY???” and we all know why but damn if we’re going to tell them because we hate that newspaper and we’ve lost interest.
Nice quote…
Instead of battling monsters in computer games children should be drawing the monsters in their heads (They do like to draw monsters, no idea why)
Instead of killing monsters they should be pretending to kill each other in the woods with homemade potentially dangerous weapons.
Nice utopian view I think, is it the same world where they hunt down Paedophiles in packs because supposedly they are preying on the children and said children can’t be left alone for 2 minutes on their own because they will get into trouble.
Or where kids roam the streets with sticks and bricks with asbo’s (english term for a kind street based restraining order) frightning old ladies on their way to the shops or burnt out cars littering the streets … Personally I’d rather the government buy those lil bastards computers to keep them OFF the street 🙂
Yep, kids should be doing what my friends and I did in the 60’s and 70’s before video games – pretending to kill each other over and over with anything that was handy.
I get the feeling some of these people don’t actually remember being kids.
Remember the arrow game that Zach Braff plays with his friend in Garden State? The one where you shoot it straight up into the air and then try not to die? Yeah. I definitely played that game when I was about 10 (sans the fire).
I think your kids are a hell of a lot safer indoors, under your thumb. I do agree that their needs to be some balance in life, though.
Wow. Where the hell did that writer grow up that his or her childhood was like that? I might not have had video games, but instead I got those Transformer action figures and they all shot each other up & stuff. It’s pretend either way; only the means have changed.
Sheesh.
Ok Foton you wanna see the best exscuse in the world to stop raiding or even playing WoW? Here you go
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/250/535549315_2daf5f2e6a_o.jpg
You win the internet award for the week. That is some messed up shit.
Heh, back in those days it wasn’t against the law to discipline a kid either. If I got into trouble, I knew the solution had a belt in the equation. I agree with Aufero and sometimes wonder if any of these people remember being kids. I sorta understand why people want to protect children, but their solution is rarely a good one.
ohsnap, that is pretty messed up. Question, does it say later in the thread how she knows it’s his and not her husbands kid? Just wondering.
Man, that article makes it hard to believe I live in the same city with someone like that.
I mean I used to run around with my friends when I was a kid with toy guns and pretend to kill my best friends. Times have changed and its carried through to video games, whats so bad with that?
I’ve got a 7 year old daughter who loves gaming. We play WoW together (she likes to make a new character, get it to level 4 or 5, then make another new character). She has a DS Lite and plays Animal Crossing, Pokemon, and Sonic. She plays violin (had her recital last night), she draws and paints all the time, she cooks and bakes with me, we jump rope, play in the park, go swimming at the town pool, bike ride…
Gaming is just another part of growing up. ANYTHING is a problem if it’s the only activity you participate in. And the killing part…it’s a game. No different than cops and robbers, and no more real.
You never hear about intelligent kids learning about the negative effects of violence through video games. You only hear about kids at the extremes who probably would have been violent with or without video games.
Every time you insult gaming, God frags a kitten.
When I was growing up we did play little league baseball, run around the park, and play in the streets. But we also used to throw rocks at each other, trip people and laugh at them as they fell, play pretend war, and a bunch of other very terrible things.
The writer in the article paints a picture of like 1950’s middle America, where people were more naive.
Also, the writer is trying to pass off wikipidia as a credible source, bad journalist, bad.
Feel free to use the Flickr picture as much as you like Foton. Hell even put it on the front page if you like! http://farm1.static.flickr.com/250/535549315_2daf5f2e6a_o.jpg
UNCLE FOTON!
Lookee what I found!
http://www.wowdrama.org/
Hoooollleeee shiiiit.
Oh… dear… lord.
Someone’s trying to make you obsolete, Foton! But don’t worry, they lack some of your delightfully acerbic wit.
We’re not trying to make Foton obsolete. We love AFK Gamer! We’re just not about the bone-dry wit so much at WoWdrama, because, dammit, the LOLz are usually self-evident without us having to make too many comments.
I’ve known about wowdrama.org and have enjoyed their stuff. But I appreciate you guarding my territory, Anon. Good work!
Perfectly complementary sites, then. Foton can browse through the concentrated drama and pick and choose the pieces he wants to poke at. 😉
I saw Scott linked this as well, I was going to comment on it then, but his blog system is fubar :P.
How does this qualify someone to talk about the problem? Anyway, I would prefer our government (Live in good ‘ol blighty if you cared) would actually pay for consoles and pc’s for the young folk around here. They stay out till god knows what hour drinking and beating the crap out of cars. Record numbers of ASBO’s (kinda like a local restraining order for an area rather than people) being handed out to youngsters to keep away from neighborhoods/shops because they cause trouble and large amounts of general damage.
Give them a damn xbox or a Wii and shut them the hell up and keep em off the damn streets, that Utopian view expressed in that article is long gone…. by a good 20 years.