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Beer and Porn for teens don't worry parents as much as video games

by jwag57 | August 14, 2008 at 05:18 pm | 148 views | add comment | 0 recommendations

Forget sex and alcohol, the bane of most teens’ parents. A new study finds that parents are more worried about the video games their children are playing than drinking or pornography. What They Play, a parent’s guide to video games, conducted separate polls of some 3,000 parents who reported that playing certain video games was less acceptable than watching porn and drinking beer. The surveys also found that watching violence was more acceptable than sexual content in video games. The only thing parents were more concerned about their children doing than playing the game “Grand Theft Auto” (19 percent) was smoking marijuana (49 percent). Watching pornography and drinking beer came in at 16 percent and 14 percent, respectively. Experts say that parents’ reactions are not that surprising given that parents believe video games are full of dangers they don’t know about.

This goes to show that people are scared of the unkown. Most parents of teens did not grow up playing video games because they didn't exist. However drinking beer and looking at porn was just as much part or their teenage years as it is today, so they know they did it and they are fine. They hear all about the violence in video games, don't know enough to really understand it and that is where the problem comes in.