Forget panic on games and just be a parent
THE recent debate over raising the digital age of consent to 16 once again set the cat among the electronic pigeons. The whole concept of a digital age of consent, and the goals it aims to achieve, seem nebulous at the best of times and even the experts seemed unable to fully agree on just what it was they were discussing.
According to some politicians, it was about protecting young people from unsuitable material. Others said it was about protecting children from unscrupulous, data-voracious companies which would use the details for improper commercial targeting.
Still more seemed to think that it was about preventing phone shops from selling smartphones to anyone under the age of 16.
In the end, and much to the relief of child-protection advocates, the proposal was defeated at committee level and the age will stay at 13.
According to the Ombudsman for Children Dr Niall Muldoon: “In my view, providing for 13 years as the digital age of consent takes more appropriate account of young people’s internet use and of the integral role that any online environment plays in their lives. It is also in keeping with international children’s rights standards... It represents a more proportionate approach to balancing the opportunities and risks that the online environment presents to children and, with that, to balancing children’s rights in this environment.”
But while the issue of the digital age of consent may have been parked – for now – the debate once more revived the question of what children should and should not be allowed to expose themselves to when online.
While much of the fretting over the perils of juvenile internet activity tends to focus more towards the social media spectrum and the fears that predatory paedophiles and blackmailers (a far more common occurrence, unfortunately) may convince or connive a child into making a terrible, life-altering mistake, Childline has just issued an interesting statement which reminds us that some of the more longstanding fears haven’t gone away, either.
According to the charity, it has seen an upswing in the number of young children ringing their helpline to discuss traumatic video games they played, and current research from groups such as CyberSafe estimates that up to 26pc of nine-year-olds have played violent games that were rated over-18, while that figure, unsurprisingly, rises to 34pc for 12-year-olds.
The ISPCC reports similar concerns, and it too has received calls from concerned children, with many of them apparently worried “they may have made the wrong decision online, (children) often call because they regret the decision and have just understood the implications. They feel they have done something wrong and they’re scared to tell their parents”.
The idea of concerned children, as opposed to the more traditional concerned parents, indicates that those kids who did contact an agency are at least sufficiently mature to recognise they have seen something upsetting or traumatic. But there is a reason why some of the best games are, and always have been, over-18s.
VIDEO games have always lent themselves to a good old-fashioned moral panic. In fact, when you consider the first media frenzy over a violent game came in America in 1976 with the driving game ‘Death Race’, it is clear this is not a new issue and we need to stop treating it as if it was.
Most people who have children of game-playing age will have grown up playing games themselves, so the idea that parents are out of their comfort zone and don’t understand
Complaining about video games is about as current as complaining about the emergence of rock ’n’ roll
all this new-fangled technology simply doesn’t wash. At this stage, complaining about video games is about as current as complaining about the emergence of rock ’n’ roll – it has been here for as long as most of us have been alive.
But once again, we see the stubborn refusal of some parents to accept that age limits are placed on some games for a very good reason.
Whether it’s famous examples such as the reliably provocative ‘Grand Theft Auto’ franchise, or newer additions to the canon such as ‘LA Noire’ and, of course, ‘Fortnite’, it often seems as if the same lessons have to be learned over and over again.
Anyone into gaming will know the experience of going into a store only to see some hapless parent blithely buying the latest gruesome game before ringing ‘Liveline’ in a panic because their 10-year-old now talks about killing hookers.
The problem is not the game. In fact, the problem is never the individual game. Every time a new game is condemned for its graphic violence and less-than-enlightened attitudes towards sex workers, those people may as well condemn the latest Hollywood shocker.
Let’s put it this way, many of us are fans of gritty, so-called ‘extreme’ cinema, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to allow a child to watch, for instance, ‘The Human Centipede’ – even if most mature audiences will have seen that film for the dark comedy it was.
The gaming industry now dwarfs even the music industry in terms of revenue generated and many of these games, even the most violent, are works of art that were as lovingly and painstakingly produced as any movie. Even the fact that Gamergate, that infamous spat between feminist gamers and the then emerging alt-right, became an election issue in America shows how deeply embedded games are in our culture.
Of course, each new week seems to bring some new and baffling development in information technology. The fact that someone can stay in their bedroom while communicating via headphones with fellow players from around the world on a multi-player platform is enticing, but not without some obvious potential perils for the immature and ill-equipped.
The games may change, the technology may improve and evolve, and the controversies may come from different sources, but the basic principles remain the same – until a person has developed to the point where they can make their own informed choices about what they play, it’s up to the parents, not the Government or Childline or the ISPCC, to keep an eye on what they are doing.
In other words, you wouldn’t buy your child a DVD of ‘Cannibal Holocaust’, so don’t buy them games targeted for older audiences.