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Allowing Your Children to Go Online with Video Games?

Written on January 31, 2008

One of the biggest things these days is taking home a game and going online and playing against real people. It is amazingly fun. I myself do it, however some of the kids who are in a room with me, granted are very good, but how young are they really?

I find myself talking to people who are 10 and 11 on a video game you have to show ID to purchase. They have worse of a mouth than I do on these games; however is this “corrupting them?”

I don’t necessarily think the video games itself are corrupting them but I do think parents should be taking more of an active role in monitoring their children’s online activities. Within 10 minutes my 11 year old nephew was on XBOX Live for the first 10 minutes ever and in his first game he was already using curse words. Of course he didn’t think we heard him since he insisted he said “what the heck!”, however, we do know he did not use the term heck. I couldn’t believe the transformation from sweet child who knows that if he is going to have a potty mouth do not let his parents and any nearby adults hear him. Granted I cant say he’s never cursed before since we cannot monitor our children 100% of the time however he knew better than to do it in front of adults. However within 10 minutes he was already “corrupted.”

I have found that kids may love to play games but as a parent we need to realize that some of these games are highly inappropriate for kids, especially to be playing online. Your son or daughter may enjoy playing Halo 3 or Rainbow Six Vegas as a video game not being online. However, remember these games do use strong language. If you do not like using this language around your children why let a video game say it to them? Even better, why let them go online and hear it from complete strangers?

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2 Responses »

  1. Jenny on February 26th, 2008 at 5:41 pm

    thanks for submitting your post to the Mommy Blog Carnival. it’ll be included in the next edition!

  2. JHS on March 9th, 2008 at 6:52 am

    Thanks for contributing this post to this week’s Carnival of Family Life, hosted at This Full House. Be sure to stop by on Monday, March 10, 2008, and support your fellow participants by checking out all of their wonderful contributions.

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