Today's Irish Times has a fairly thoughtful story up about the topic. Instead of running around worrying that video games are to blame for all of today's wrongs, the article meticulously walks through a number of concerns, citing a number of different bits of research, about childhood and playing video games.

More importantly, it includes some solid ideas for child rearing in the age of consoles.

The most interesting for me were the comments made by Sue Palmer in her book, Detoxing Childhood - What Parents Need to Know to Raise Bright Balanced Children. Palmer devotes an enter section to the topic of electronics.

Her advice to parents include:

Stick with real life for at least the first three years;

Place firm limits (an hour a day at most) on computer use until children are around eight or nine, and well on the way to being readers and writers;

Limit time spent in virtual worlds until children are well into their teens.

A key point: Set these rules and boundaries up when children are young, because it could be nearly impossible to introduce them when they are teenagers.

Another very interesting point that the article makes is that children aren't the only ones retreating from family life. Parents too should monitor their time spent in front of electronics.

Screening the young for games addictions

Schiesel does understand that Prince of Persia is a work of fantasy, set in a Persia that doesn't exist in our world, but questions whether the magical setting is enough to absolve the developers from accurately depicting aspects of Persian culture.

What are we to make of a “Prince of Persia” who talks and behaves like a 17-year-old American mall rat? A “Prince of Persia” with blue eyes, fully Anglicized facial features and what looks like a tan he picked up on spring break? Is it taking a video game too seriously to shrink in distaste from such characterizations? In fairness, the new Prince of Persia does not claim any historical or cultural authenticity; the game is set in a fantastic magical realm rather than in a rendition of any real place. But does that absolve the game of any responsibility?

I can certainly see the point he is making. The same sort of point could be made for television shows and movies. Before I moved to Georgia in the mid-80's, my entire notion of what it is to live in Georgia was based off of The Dukes of Hazzard - the only cultural reference I had available to me at the time. I was certainly surprised. As surprised as any Westerner would be going to Persia expecting to see English faces and hear English voices.

Now I am mature and intelligent enough to know the difference, but that certainly wasn't always the case.

Prince of Persia is a great game, but simply being a video game is no longer sufficient to earn a pass from being held to account for shaping the perceptions and attitudes of its players. Not anymore.

Even Escapist Fare Can’t Escape Some Real-World Questions [New York Times via Evil Avatar]

This is the subject matter that Turner tackles in her recent rant/article on The Times website. Although her article is titled "Xbox is crack for Kids" she mostly complains about general media and technology and how to (or not to) regulate "screen time" for her kids and how this is a seemingly impossible task. She saves her most venomous words for video games which she attacks with vehemence in the last paragraph:

Once, such kids would be the playground outcasts, but no longer. Mine are. Because, unlike the TV-hating parents, I refuse to buy them portable gaming consoles, Xboxes, GameCubes, PS2s. These are Satan's Sudoku, crack cocaine of the brain. Even the crappiest cartoon or lamest soap teaches a child about character, plot, drama, humour, life. Playing videogames, children are mentally imprisoned, wired into their evil creators' brains. And they play them - beepety-beep - on journeys, over family meals, any minute in which they find themselves unamused.

And their parents never seem to say, hey, this is the bit where you pick up a book. Or game over, kids: get an inner life.

Several Times readers were quick to come forward and refute Turner's claims and point out that within her article she even states that "I don't have the resolve for all this." How can someone complain of the negative effects of media on their children when they admit that they can't be bothered to make the effort to control it themselves? Times reader Marcus hit the nail right on the head with his comment:

Ahhh videogames. The source of all evil. Again. I'm guessing Janice you've never ever played one. I regulate my kids TV time very strictly - about 4 hours a week presently. But I let them play Super Mario Galaxy (as part of that time). It is a joyous, wondrous world of colour and fun and inspires them to draw pictures, write stories and play 'Mario' outside. So what exactly is the problem with that?

The problem you have by the sounds of it, is that you are laying blame at the door of the easiest scapegoat and not your own deficiencies as a parent.

It's the age old saga, parents complaining about something they just don't understand and heaven knows they aren't going to try. The whole piece just reeks of someone who discovered too late that if you are going to try and regiment your kid's media time, it has to be done from the beginning. You can't just decide this would be a good idea after eight to ten years and then only half heartedly try to enforce it. Just like the never ending debate over video game violence, the problem of too much media time for kids lies squarely on the doorstep of the parents. The onus, Miss Turner, is on you.

Xbox is crack for kids [The Times]
[Thanks, zany_ninja]