The advent of video-gaming, though traced back to 1958, commercially became available to those of us here in Madison 1972 when Pong hit the market. If you remember this game, it amounted to two players trying to hit an electronic ball back and forth to each other. We’ve come a long way from the drab, slow moving screens of the ‘70s. 

If you have a child at home between the ages of 8-18, I don’t have to tell you that playing video games is consuming more and more or their time. In the 1980s children played about 4 hours a week (this included time away from home at the arcades), in the 1990s this time had increased at home (arcade time had gone way down) for girls to about 4 1/2 hours and for boys about 7 hours a week. Now in the 2000s girls are averaging about 5 hours a week, boys 13 hours a week. 

Even though video game use is obviously increasing, it’s not that statistic that has me worried. It’s the tendency towards violence, sometimes extreme violence, which is showing up in these games that has me very troubled. I know that there are benefits to video play; it’s challenging, sometimes educational, and always entertaining. The negative aspect, however, of exactly how much violence is being portrayed in this “sport” is going to very quickly outweigh those benefits. Some experts say that up to 89% of games show some form of violence and over half of them show some character being seriously injured or killed off. More and more children often name these violent games as their favorites while parents usually can’t name their child’s favorite video game at all. 

As parents we need to become more involved in the games our kids are playing. With some studies showing that playing videos with violent content can lead a child to more arguments with their teacher, more physical fights, and most of all the kid simply not being aware of their own behavioral conduct (more aggressive conduct I might add).  

The experts are going to continue to argue for years to come over exactly what should be rated as violent content, how much game playing with violent content is too much, what age groups should be restricted from this aggressive content, and the list goes on and on. We as parents know our children. We need to know what games they want to purchase or play at a friend’s house. We need to do our research and act as a filter between our kids and this negative form of media before our children become more desensitized to this violent behavior.