GRAND THEFT AUTO: San Andreas: What Can A Parent Do?
In the last few weeks, I’ve been hearing from concerned parents around the country that everywhere they go, they see ads for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the highly violent, racially-charged video game that came out last week. Blockbuster has wallpapered its stores with ads, EB Games features the posters prominently (and sells the games to minors...), and there are ads in every Playstation magazine and in many places where Sony products are sold (the game is only out right now on Sony’s Playstation 2). Parents feel frustrated, as though they are swimming against a tide they can’t stop. They want to know what to do. One mother wrote to Blockbuster’s corporate headquarters. Another complained at the local movie theater.

As important and as potentially effective as these actions are, the most immediate thing a parent can do is to sit down with their kids and talk. Kids really want reasons why they can’t do something. They may not agree with your perspective, but if you give them reasons, they are more inclined to listen and argue. Arguing isn’t bad -- it’s dialogue. And in the end, that conversation is your chance to get your point of view and your values into the conversation. Ultimately, this is the best thing you can do when challenging media pushes the envelope of what you feel is acceptable for your child. When kids get to the age where they can go into a retailer and buy a game like this (and many of them don’t enforce the M rating and besides, they can get games online), you’re in the position of hoping that all that good information you installed in them works.

So when you hear, “But Mom, I know it’s just a game, ” you might tell your kid that researchers at the University of Toledo have found that violence in video games has been proven to have a stronger effect on kids than violence in movies does. Dr. Jeanne Funk, a clinical psychologist, published a study in the Journal of Adolescence this year detailing her research on 150 fourth-and fifth-graders about exposure to media violence. Funk found that both video game and movie violence exposure were associated with stronger pro-violence attitudes, but only video game playing resulted in lower empathy for the victims of violence. She suggested that the more active and aggressive nature of video games, where the players actually plan and carry out the violent actions, was the cause.

Ask your kids if they want to be manipulated into feeling less badly about people in pain, people who have things stolen from them, people who are victims of violence, drugs, and abuse. It may not stop them from playing the game at a friend’s house, but your perspective just might make them see the game with different eyes.