For years, video games have been a convenient scapegoat for politicians to use in complaining about the sort of thing "kids these days" do on a daily basis. In the past, it's been other things -- from TV to music to comic books. But, these days, video games pop up an awful lot. So I guess it should come as no surprise at all that a recent study I read in the newspaper said that parents put much greater limits on how much time kids can spend playing video games than they do on TV or movies.
Of course, this seems entirely backwards to me. Now I do not have children but I know what kind of crap is on TV. I can't imagine someone making the arguement of MTV over video games. Not that parents should let young kids just randomly play any video game, but if they're playing age-appropriate video games, you would think that would be a lot better than just sitting there watching TV with no interactivity whatsoever. Plenty of studies have shown that the interactivity of video games helps kids improve hand-eye coordination, problem solving skills and since video games have gone online, their social skills. While online the kids form 'clans," which are groups of their friends that get together and battle it out against other clans.
There are many educational video games as well. So why not encourage that? It's not examined in the studies, but I'd guess that the constant complaining about these "awful video games" has an impact on a busy parent. And the sensationalized media just plays it up and takes it to a new level.
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