The Associated Press and AOL Games released a survey earlier this month on gaming habits among a field of about 3,000. There aren’t a ton of surprises here for anyone that follows the industry, but I was a bit disheartened to see, “parents simply don’t play video games with their kids very often. 43 percent said that they actually never play with their kids, while 30 percent stated that they play, but only for less than an hour.”
As the age of the average gamer continues to climb, I’d expect a lot more gamer-parents to pick up the controller alongside their kids. Still there, seems to be a real disconnect here between games and other media. You’d be hard-pressed to find any reasonable parent that would admit to never watching a movie or TV show with their kids, so why the free pass when it comes to games?
I’d be interested to see the same data broken out among owners of the individual new-gen consoles. Granted, Wii skews younger than 360 and PS3 owners, but I’m willing to bet that its “game for everyone” controls and family-friendly offerings put more than 43% of Wii-owning parents into the game along with their kids.
3 responses so far ↓
Paul Berkman // December 6, 2007 at 2:25 pm |
For many parents there is a reluctance that is both natural and understandable in terms of their participation in their kids’ video games. Parents have lots of demands on their time, so those precious hours spent with their children need to be intelligently allocated. A caring parent is motivated by lots of concerns — including, but not limited to, character building, educational considerations, imparting the right values, demands made by other stuff on the kids’ schedules, and just plain fun. To a very great extent, the parent’s choice of activities that he or she participates in will make a strong statement to the children about what that parent values most.
In that context, very few children need to be encouraged to play video games or to actively engage in various forms of electronic stimulation. The kids will engage in those activities — for bettr or worse — whether or not the parents get involved. Of greater concern to the parent is that the kids not get “hooked” on sources of electronic stimulation to such an extent that other valuable activities get crowded out. Those could include reading, sports and other forms of physical exercise, homework, visiting museums, mind-challenging (non-electronic) board games (like chess or checkers), and just plain social interaction with others.
So statistics that show only very modest parental participation in electronic games with their kids are not necesarily a bad thing. The important question isn’t what specific activity the parents are involved in. More crucial is whether they are involved at all with their kids, and to what extent.
Idetrorce // December 15, 2007 at 2:13 pm |
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
guyguyguy43 // April 14, 2009 at 2:40 am |
very good, I like it.
