Parents say chugging beer and watching porno less harmful for kids than playing GTA

By Davey Winder
Tuesday, 12 August 2008 02:56

Entertainment

According to a new poll, parents are more concerned about their kids being exposed to video games than they are them either swigging back a beer or watching a porno flick. If that wasn't surprising enough, it seems that sex in games is a bigger parental turn off than virtual violence...

What They Play markets itself as a parents guide to video gaming, so one has to imagine that it's in a good position to question them about their attitude towards video games. The results of a recent poll designed to do just have now been published.

"These poll results demonstrate that parents are as apprehensive about their children’s media diets as they are about traditional social issues such as alcohol, drugs, violence and sex" says John Davison, president of What They Like.

2866 parents took part in two distinct polls, the first of which was conducted between April 4th and 10th 2008. This asked what the 1266 parental participants were most offended by within the context of a video game.

At the top of the list with 37 percent was a man and woman having sex, followed by two men kissing on 27 percent. Just behind the gay sex comes a graphically severed head on 25 percent. Surprisingly, the multiple usage of the F-word polled a mere 9 percent concern.

In the second poll running from August 1st to 6th 2008, parents were asked about what they would be most concerned about their 17 year old son or daughter getting up to during a sleep over. The 1600 participants revealed that smoking a joint was the main concern of 49 percent of them.

Yet more parents were worried about their kids playing Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto (19 percent) than were bothered about them either watching porno movies (16 percent) or chugging beer (14 percent).

"Although these findings seem surprising at first, they hint at fears parents have about video games" says Cheryl K. Olson, co-author of Grand Theft Childhood.
 
Of course, the small matter that parents concerned about video gaming are the target audience of the website, and therefore the people likely to have participated in the polling, does mean that games such as Grand Theft Auto were always on a hiding to nothing here.