The Kidfluence

There are a couple of hot button issues right now for parents who are trying to guide innocent children through trying times.  Today the video game Grand Theft Auto Four is being released.  Already predicted to be the biggest selling video game ever, the Grand Theft series has been immensely popular.  The problem is that Grand Theft Auto is really a game for adults who can understand the context of the violence contained within.  Much the way Bloom County and Doonesbury transformed the Sunday funnies from a place for kids to a place for adults to go for a laugh.  Grand Theft Auto has taken the video game platform, originally something that was the domain of kids, and turned it into something more and more adults enjoy.  That in itself creates a problem because many adults still think of video games as something for kids.  Therefore they don't pay much attention to ratings and they allow kids to play a game where the game player can steal, cheat, lie, maim and kill.  Many have come to say that allowing kids to play violent video games has made kids more violent, however, a new book challenges that theory.  Two Harvard professors have looked at all the data and various studies looking at the effect of violent video games on kids and they've found that, outside of a possible link to an increase in bullying, there's not much else to it.  The book they wrote is called "Grand Theft Childhood" and they claim that there isn't much in the way of hard data to conclude that kids who play violent video games then take the lessons they learned there and bring them into their real life.  It's true that kids who have shot up schools have played these games but digging a little further finds that those kids also had other, more serious problems that likely lead to their violent outbursts.  In the end, whether the games make kids more violent or not, should they still have access to it??  Just because it might not make the kid shoot up their school, that still doesn't excuse the fact that innocent children should not be exposed to such violent themes in their entertainment.  If, for no other reason, than it does desensitize them to some degree toward the suffering of some in our community.  Killing people for fun, even in a virtual world, not really the way any kid should be spending their free time. The other issue for parents of kids that has come about this week are the scantily clad photos of Miley Cyrus.  First there were inappropriate private photos of her that made it onto the internet and then on top of that a new professional photo shoot for Vanity Fair that shows, what appears to be a naked Miley Cyrus, frolicking on a bed with satin sheets.  You don't have to be a prude to ask, is that necessary?  The messages of overt sexuality that our children are constantly exposed to can't be any healthier than playing video games where violence prevails.  The problem is, the marketing machine that is working so feverishly to wrestle the dollars out of the hands of kids, has found that controversy sells.  Miley Cyrus is already making millions but watch that number increase every time she and her marketers can find another way to get her into the headlines.  15 year old girls posing for pictures like they're wannabe porn stars is abhorrent.  In a time when we hear far too many stories about internet predators and pedophiles littering our society, we send a mixed message when we think that selling a 15 year old girls' sexuality is acceptable. Our kids today are being raised on a steady diet of violence and sex.  Each day someone, somewhere is trying to come up with the next way to push the envelope to get his or her client a little more screen time and a few more bucks in their bank account.  Parents can try and shield their kids from this only to find out they went to play at Billy's and his parents let him play Grand Theft Auto Four in a room with pictures of a barely dressed Miley Cyrus hanging on the wall.  It is up to all parents to do a better job of restricting access to such things by children. The old argument that this has always been a problem.  TV networks shooting Elvis from the waist up is a classic argument for how this issue has always been around and in the end Elvis didn't hurt anyone.  The thing is, even if that argument holds some water, the bigger issue now is the age of exposure.  It wasn't ten year olds watching Elvis' thrusting hips in their bedroom but today it is ten year olds trying to mimic Miley Cyrus or playing Grand Theft Auto Four. There's an old saying that it takes a village to raise a child.  I just get depressed when I think about my kids and why they always seem to make friends with the kid who's parent, is the village idiot. Until We Type Again, Take It Ease !