4 replies to this topic

[Mbob61]

Having seen This Article earlier today it got me thinking as well about which was worse for children out of the two.
Having thought about it, it seems to me that both video gaming and pornography are both equally as bad although it depends very heavily on what games the children are playing. There are millions of games aimed at children which are either nice and educational or have content appropriate for their market.
Yes, games like Modern Warfare 2 or GTA are bad for children but the fact that they have an 18 certificate implies that they shouldn't be for children in the first place and are therefore obviously going to contain inappropriate material.
Pornography sends out a pretty bad image of women and is far easier for a child to acquire without adult help than the unsuitable video games. It doesn't take 5 minutes on google to find some adult content but most younger children will always be turned away when trying to buy an adult video game.
Imo, it is pretty stupid of him to say one is much worse than the other.
What does everyone else think?

Mike

P.S - Apologies for the ramblings

[Libains]

They're equally bad for children. However, they're both accessible to children - parents will always buy their little brats games that are far too old for them, and give them unrestricted internetz. I remember, I was bought Resident Evil Zero for the Gamecube when I was ten. It's an 18. Admittedly didn't do much to me, but nonetheless it could do some severe harm to others. I will also admit to being guilty of using my parent's unsecured connection to source nekked pics of random celebs, we'll say Olivia Wilde so that Wiz can later agree with me So either way, they're both easy o come by and neither has scarred me (although no woman will ever be as hawt as Olivia Wilde, but that's my personal issue).

However, one area that as failed to have been mentioned is film. It contains themes unsuitable for children for the most part (both violence and sex, more than most video games or porn can get across in one go). And yet, by some miracle of all cock ups, you could buy the original Alien (a truly deserved 18 rating) at the age of six in the United Kingdom as we have no laws against it, ridiculous government that we have. If we were writing something about what is most hazardous to children, that would be my first port of call, not porn or video games.

[CJ]

I don't see in what games are considered harming for children, seriously, I used to play Resident Evil while I was only 8 years old, and so did most of my friends at primary school.
I remember also that GTA 2 was the most played game back then, even girls used to play it, and we didn't turn into gun-wielding-psychos.
But concerning pronography, I can't really judge of that, as all porn sites and channels were (and still are) censored by the government.

And seriously, that stupid Ron Jeremy is a porn star, does anyone except him to say that video games are less harming for children that his own source of revenue ? That would be like EA saying that games are bad for children, and that parents should not buy them.

[Zeke]

It's not necessarily the age more of the maturity level of an individual, my little brother is a lot more mature for his age.

If you know that what you are playing is only a game and accept that the consequences in RL are far greater than that in the game then it doesn't matter what game you get.

IMO Parents who blame video games for violent behaviour in their children are usually the lazy and neglectful kind.

As for porn being bad, it depends on whether they understand what they're seeing or not.

[RandomHero]

I don’t think that porn can have the same impact as 18+ video games.

Porn may lead underage viewers to see woman as objects not as people. But from experience I think we can all say that we have grown out of that and we now understand the distinction between porn and real life (he says this as the curiously hot woman plumber turns up at his door with only a tool belt on). Porn is something that happens at a young age because young people are curious about the human body and all that.

But the difference with porn and violent video games is that (well I don’t know about you) is that as a young person I never had the erg to kill people and see dead people and all the other things that appear in video games today. Yes I did want to play GTA and all the 18+ games, but not because of the erg to kill people, but the simple fact that I was not allowed to have them. But back to the point, a 10 year old kid playing a game like GTA or Res Evil can actually be influenced and in some cases numbed of feelings toward killing, or even start to feel part of the video game (as emersion is a big part of modern games), and this can have effects on a young mind. It is proven that young people do not have the same ability as more mature people to make a distinction between video games and real life.

Now im not here to advocate the point that "video games make people kill" im strongly against that. But there is a difference between porn and video games and the affect that it can have on young peoples minds.