Times Tirade Claims Xbox is Crack for Kids

[Gemini]

Times Tirade Claims Xbox is Crack for Kids
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Janice Turner is a hard working mom. She can't constantly be watching everything her children do which includes watching TV, using the computer and listening to the iPod. One thing she can control apparently is how often her kids play video games, which is never since she refuses to buy her kids any gaming consoles. As a parent, this is of course her choice and more power to her for trying to get her kids to spend some quality time playing outside with other kids and the like. My parents did the same to me with cartoons. Saturday at noon the TV went off and my brother and I went outside. Getting your kids to do anything besides intaking copious amounts of media has been a problem for parents since the invention of the radio. But, as "media" grows larger there are more distractions that make it harder for parents to get their kids away from it.

This is the subject matter that Turner tackles in her recent rant/article on The Times website. Although her article is titled "Xbox is crack for Kids" she mostly complains about general media and technology and how to (or not to) regulate "screen time" for her kids and how this is a seemingly impossible task. She saves her most venomous words for video games which she attacks with vehemence in the last paragraph:

Once, such kids would be the playground outcasts, but no longer. Mine are. Because, unlike the TV-hating parents, I refuse to buy them portable gaming consoles, Xboxes, GameCubes, PS2s. These are Satan's Sudoku, crack cocaine of the brain. Even the crappiest cartoon or lamest soap teaches a child about character, plot, drama, humour, life. Playing videogames, children are mentally imprisoned, wired into their evil creators' brains. And they play them - beepety-beep - on journeys, over family meals, any minute in which they find themselves unamused.

And their parents never seem to say, hey, this is the bit where you pick up a book. Or game over, kids: get an inner life.

Several Times readers were quick to come forward and refute Turner's claims and point out that within her article she even states that "I don't have the resolve for all this." How can someone complain of the negative effects of media on their children when they admit that they can't be bothered to make the effort to control it themselves? Times reader Marcus hit the nail right on the head with his comment:

Ahhh videogames. The source of all evil. Again. I'm guessing Janice you've never ever played one. I regulate my kids TV time very strictly - about 4 hours a week presently. But I let them play Super Mario Galaxy (as part of that time). It is a joyous, wondrous world of colour and fun and inspires them to draw pictures, write stories and play 'Mario' outside. So what exactly is the problem with that?

The problem you have by the sounds of it, is that you are laying blame at the door of the easiest scapegoat and not your own deficiencies as a parent.

It's the age old saga, parents complaining about something they just don't understand and heaven knows they aren't going to try. The whole piece just reeks of someone who discovered too late that if you are going to try and regiment your kid's media time, it has to be done from the beginning. You can't just decide this would be a good idea after eight to ten years and then only half heartedly try to enforce it. Just like the never ending debate over video game violence, the problem of too much media time for kids lies squarely on the doorstep of the parents. The onus, Miss Turner, is on you.

Xbox is crack for kids [The Times]

 

[Gemini]

'Xbox is crack for kids,' declares Times columnist

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Is anybody else feeling dizzy? It must be due to the constant eye rolling prompted by the mainstream press' recent vendetta against informed opinion and logical argument, the results of which have yielded a particularly mystifying (and entirely non-existent) version of Mass Effect. Though the attention paid to every sensational sentence is undeserved, watching someone go off the rails and take their keyboard with them is, at the very least, an excellent source of entertainment. Today's performer is The Times columnist, Janice Turner, who doesn't waste a single punctuation mark before declaring, "Xbox is crack for kids."

The greatest thing about Turner's meandering piece is its ability to convince you that it's a somewhat reasonable defense of children's exposure to television and the "unfathomable black magic" of technology. There's even some evidence of parental influence (!) in the suggestion to monitor kids' total "screen time." But like a skilled magician, Turner saves the real reveal for the last few paragraphs, dramatically pulling hypocrisy out of a hat when you least expect it. How'd she do that?

Turner proudly declares that "unlike the TV-hating parents," she simply bars game consoles -- otherwise known as "Satan's Sudoku" and "crack cocaine for the brain" -- from her home. In a single sentence, she manages to give television far too much credit and gaming nothing more than a scornful, ill-informed glance. "Even the crappiest cartoon or lamest soap teaches a child about character, plot, drama, humour, life," insists Turner. With these qualities clearly lacking in any games ever made, children have no choice but to become "mentally imprisoned, wired into their evil creators' brains."

Books and television are given a free pass, but as soon as the media becomes interactive it warrants the label of "addiction," one applied so aloofly when the subject matter is alien and obviously unfamiliar. While the final judgment urges kids to "get an inner life," we feel we have better advice to offer: Write sensationalist drivel to bring in the hits! Just remember, darling. They'll come to your credibility too.

 

[ljinsane]

Hell the steven king books I read when I was a kid (starting in the 6th grade) were far worse than any video game I ever played

 

[OLDSCHOOL]