Parental opinions of the impact of gaming on children have largely remained unchanged since the 1970s, according to the latest research.
Released by the nonprofit Games for Change, the paper, written by research director Rachel Kowert, examined the views of parents across approximately 200,000 media articles and social media posts. The online opinions came from parents across 15 countries and were translated from seven languages. In her research, Kowert found that negative views of gaming outweighed positive views by about 34% to 6%.
Among the biggest issues parents had with gaming were its effects on their children’s screen time and phone addiction. The parents were also bothered by violence within the games, as well as their tendency to include age-inappropriate content.
To address misconceptions about gaming among parents, Kowert suggested the creation of a new system that pairs children with their parents as they play games together.
Games for Change has also kick-started programs designed to involve parents in gaming curation, encouraging them to build video games themselves through coding.
In an interview with Variety, Games for Change Chief Program and Operating Officer Arana Shapiro stressed the importance of parents helping children cultivate healthy approaches to gaming.
“With the assumption that because so many kids are playing games, teens especially, that if you assume that your child is going to end up playing video games one way or another, then laying that foundation becomes extremely important so that you can fall back,” Shapiro said. “Otherwise, they’re stepping into something that they’ve had no experience in. So like anything else as a parent, it’s a little bit of a responsibility to know how you’re going to lay that foundation to allow for a healthy growth as they get older.”
In their paper, researchers said fears about video gaming among parents have persisted for decades.
Since the 1970s, parents, politicians and activists have mainly argued that there is a link between video games and violence. Since the popularization of video gaming, studies have been conducted that provide conflicting findings.
In 2019, the Association for Psychological Science rejected previously published papers’ findings that violent games spur violent behavior. In a study led by researcher Joseph Hilgard, gamers did not display increased aggression toward other players, even when video games were altered to be more or less violent.
Other studies also indicate that aggression among children who play video games can be context-dependent.
With social media also presenting concerns for parents, Kowert said the lasting fears seem to be specifically focused on gaming, predicting that concerns among parents are more likely to persist.
“The other thing about gaming is with the media ecosystem we see a terrible violent crime happening and immediately it gets tagged with, ‘Oh, that person played video games.’ And we’ve seen that, again, for the last 50 years. So there is something unique about this conversation,” Kowert told Variety. “And sometimes I get pushback where they say, ‘Oh, well, social media has come.’ OK, we also do have fears about social media, which we now see, but it hasn’t replaced gaming because those fears still persist.”
