by VK Freelance

Created on: July 07, 2009

Should parents enforce kids to abide by gaming age restrictions?

The US

The age restrictions on games differ from country to country. If we take the laws in the US for example, there is no federal law prohibiting the sale of violent or sexually explicit video games to minors. The entertainment software rating board (ESRB) suggest age appropriateness, but it is just that - a suggestion, not a law. The highest rating is an M rating, meaning "mature" and is likely to contain "intense violence, blood, gore and sexually explicit scenes," one such example is, "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" which requires the player to steal SWAT cars, gun down rivals and incinerate people, apparently it also has a patch that reveals a sex mini-game.

M rating

So it does have an M rating, as you would hope, but there are no laws in place to enforce it! So your 8 year old daughter could go out and buy and play this. What is the point in age rating if they don't enforce it?

The UK

The UK on the other hand is much stricter, games are rated 12, 16 or 18 by the British Board of Film Classification's (BBFC) the same rating system as films. And it is an OFFENCE to sell a rated game to a minor! Simple as that, if you do so you can be fined up to 5000 or six months in prison. Great you say! That's more like it, however over 90% of games on the market are exempt from this legal classification! The majority are rated under the Pan European Game Information System (PEGI), this is a voluntary rating system, the games manufacturers choose the rating, it is then reviewed before being finalized. However there is no law in place to stop someone selling a game under the PEGI rating system to a minor!

It's down to the parents.

Without proper stringent laws in place, it is down to you, the parents to ensure that what your child watches, plays, or listens to is suitable for their age and cognitive development. Allowing your child to engage in a video game that is highly violent and sexually explicit, when they are too young to understand the significance of it, can be a dangerous decision.

Does violence breed violence?

But does watching, or playing violent images causes aggression in children? This is an age old debate, and many psychologists have tried to find the answer. Albert Bandura, a psychologist, in 1961 conducted an experiment of aggressive patterns of behaviour in children. He had a doll 'bobo' that was inflatable and about the size of a child; the participants were between the ages

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