{"id":5789,"date":"2011-03-08T08:30:07","date_gmt":"2011-03-08T14:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamesanityblog.com\/?p=5789"},"modified":"2011-03-08T08:30:07","modified_gmt":"2011-03-08T14:30:07","slug":"is-___-ok-for-my-8-year-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/08\/is-___-ok-for-my-8-year-old\/","title":{"rendered":"Is ___ OK for my 8-year old?"},"content":{"rendered":"

BRENDA (a grandmother) WRITES: My grandson is playing Halo with his dad on his visit and\u00a0buying him the toys also. \u00a0His mom said he can play Halo when he is\u00a0sixteen and get the toys at 10. \u00a0Is playing Halo at eight harmful<\/em>?<\/p>\n

The answer may surprise you.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Thanks for the letter. First of all, the reader is asking about Halo: Reach but this BLANK can stand in for almost any M-rated game, so I thought I’d give a less specific answer.<\/p>\n

I do not believe that any video games poses lasting harm to children. At all. Studies show “increased short-term aggression.” Other things that cause increased short-term aggression are: \u00a0football, watching sports, E-rated games, scary movies, etc., So what’s really happening with your 8-year old is that he’s becoming desensitized to FAKE violence (real violence is anther thing entirely) and thats fun because he’s feeling like a grown-up man or a “big boy” because he’s playin’ with dad. Bonding with Dad. Mainly, “having fun with Dad.”<\/p>\n

And that’s the take away for you Brenda (and other concerned mom’s and grandmas). It’s not ideal, at all, but in this case it is Dads call. Or take the case of my 8-year old boy. I won’t let him play M-rated games but he can at a friend’s house – whether I like it or not. Kids today are SURROUNDED by questionable media – much more so then 10 years ago. (I don’t see any evidence of kids being affected over that time and more). I’ve told reminded and reminded the parents of Henry’s friends not too allow it, they do anyway and \u00a0either because they don’t care, gotten tired of saying ‘no’, or, through experience, don’t believe they cause any harm (this is by far the biggest reason). As I say, it isn’t ideal, at all. Kids that young can’t process story or put the violence in context – but that doesn’t mean kids will be traumatized. I say this with confidence, because there is no evidence suggesting it does).<\/p>\n

So which is worse? Seeing and playing a violent game unsupervised with likewise immature buddies, or playing it while sitting next to Dad?<\/p>\n

Stop worrying (hopefully there aren’t deeper issues here), but I think it’s going to be fine. It’s certainly not worth starting a fight between Dad and Mom, I think.<\/p>\n

Thanks for the letter!<\/p>\n

-GamerDad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BRENDA (a grandmother) WRITES: My grandson is playing Halo with his dad on his visit and\u00a0buying him the toys also. \u00a0His mom said he can play Halo when he is\u00a0sixteen and get the toys at 10. \u00a0Is playing Halo at eight harmful? The answer may surprise you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-askgamerdad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}