Yesterday, I admitted that I've been slipping, letting my children...(ahem, mostly my teens) use the computers to their hearts' content this summer. Sure, every day I scream and stomp like a 2 year old at the peak of a tornado sized temper tantrum, basically telling them to go outside and get some fresh air, but...
Like I said, I'm losing that battle...and I'm ok with it, because it's summertime!
But, the question of the day today is: Do you know what games your kids are playing? Or, better yet, are you aware of the content of the most popular games on the market?
But Mom Says Bad Words...
Yes I do. (These kids make me say bad words, I can't help it sometimes.)
But, some of the most popular games on the market today don't even have conversations and words beyond the cursing. Somehow, they've managed to string all of the curse words together to create sentences that are made up of solely curse words!
And, did you know that your kids could literally go to a strip club, watch a stripper dancing on the pole, and even throw some cash at her? How about drive to the corner and pick up a prostitute...or maybe some drugs...I even read you can catch an STD in one of the Adult Rated games.
There are guns and knives and street fights. There is plenty of blood, gore, and even torture. All of the things that nightmares are made of. Scenes that we work so hard to keep our children away from are right at their fingertips.
And, I'm just scraping the top of the bucket right now. Some of you would probably be downright shocked to find out some of the graphic verbatim and scenes that are in these quite popular gamrs.
Which Games to Watch Out For
I'm not going to list the names of the games your kids shouldn't be exposed to, as it's your choice what games your kids and teens can play.
I won't judge.
But, for those of you who are not aware that brutal sexual content, drugs, torture, prostitution, and much more is right at your children's fingertips, I'll say that you might want to check the rating of the games your kids/teens are playing.
Watch out for the Mature (M) rating, and the Adults Only (AO) rating is actually worse than the Mature rating. Here is a list of Adult Only games on Wikipedia, although I can't vouch for whether it's all-inclusive or not.
The Mature rated games are just one level below that AO rating, so they aren't much better. Kids/teens will still potentially be exposed to nudity and adult themes, "bad words" strung together like they can form complete sentences.
"I Won't Buy Those Games For My Kids!"
Say what you want, even if you won't buy these games for your kids, they can still get their hands on them. They can borrow them from a friend, or even play them while they are at the next door neighbor's house, and kids nowadays know how to download games on BitTorrent and other torrent sites.
So, don't think that just because you won't buy your kids those kind of games, they don't have access to them.
Do you know what kind of games YOUR kids are playing?
