Kids and parental control

The last time I tried to start a thread it turned out someone had started a website on the topic for QL-filters, but this time I tried to search without any success. With everything going on in the gaming industry right now it might be a bit secondary, but thought it would be interesting to hear how peoples experience with parental control was when they started playing games. The whole "VIDEO GAMES ARE RUINING OUR CHILDREN" always seemed a bit weird to me.

I remember getting our first computer in the 90's and as a pre-teenager altavisting some sort of porn and my father walking in on me and a bunch of friends and laughing and then exiting the room. So there basically wasn't any parental control what so ever. And needless to say I didn't have any parental control what so ever when it came to games. So what was your experience?

My mother seemed to not care about what I would see, I don't know if she didn't think it was possible to stop me from seeing things or that she knew I was probably more capable of interpreting shit than her by about age 10 or so. The most I got were warnings against saying anything about myself or talking to anyone else on the internet. Because they're all trying to rape me.

I don't think I will set parental controls. I'd rather just watch them and if something crazy or 'mature' happens I'll talk to them about it. You're better off letting an 8 year old play Mortal Kombat and watch Striptease followed by talking to them than you are by banning blood and genitals while they figure out why you have a problem with blood and genitals from someone else.

I wonder what tomorrow's Technology The Kids Are Using That They Need To Stop Using Because My Generation Didn't Have Those And That's Dangerous is? What new invention will come up that parents hate because it allows their children to have sex, or might make their children want to have sex, or might make their children want to have a 'wrong' kind of sex, whatever it is, I'm sure the reason it's terrible is because kids are having sex. Will it be a phone that auto-organizes all your friends with benefits and schedules a hook-up plan for you right out of the box? An app that does a basic match-making service for lunch break blowies? Get ready, because it will be the new terrible thing that is so terrible because kids have never ever ever had sex with each other before.

Alright here's a weird one. My mom freaked out over us watching the movie Grease. ( yeah I know ). 3 days later my dad basically makes us watch Friday the 13th part 3 , just so he could scare the crap out of us kids.

Other than that weird scenario my parents could care less about what I watched or read.

I grew up without any parental control over what I did or got into, and I got into some crazy shit. So, I find the way my mom is raising my much younger brother incredibly strange, as it's just the opposite. She has complete control of his computer and phone access. It's weird, man.

I was kinda restricted but only with stuff that my mom heard bad things about and had nothing to do with what it actually was. So Mortal Kombat and Power Rangers were banned but Daggerfall and Akira were fine.

If/When I have a child I hope I'll be able to make the right calls with this stuff.

I had no real interest in games above my age rating until I was 12 or so and by that point, my parents determined I was old enough to determine if a game was suitable for me and were even expecting me to determine if they were suitable for my younger brother. Me and my brother have not become horrible killers so I think my parents did a good job.

As for stuff like porn. My parents never attempted to bring it up even though I knew that they knew I was watching it. They just gave me my space. Going back to my home country of Sri Lanka, I was surprised at how progressive my parents were compared to the people their age who lived there.

hmmmmm, It was kinda odd in the 80s. My father was involved in our gaming since the atari 2600, so if there was a porn or violent game he'd know about it earlier then us. I felt that it never got as notorious till I became 13 in 1990 and I was activity seeking it out. And by the time I was that age I knew Leasure Suit Larry had those dumb 60s trivia and I could easily just steal a nudie magazine off of a supermarket shelf when they weren't looking. Around that time I was old enough to play bloody games but I was more into mechanics of games that sometimes they turned me off if it wasn't as sophisticated as Mortal Kombat or Doom. Like a game like Primal Rage as a teen was ridiculious controls and I couldn't convince a friend to play along with me. And when I was in that age, it was more of a social element to get these games, I'm socializing with other kids in order for them to teach me to use a BBS to download nude photos of Cindy Crawford.

I was in this odd age where the whole entire ESRB thing kinda happened and I was older then the labels on the games. The only time it got bad was when a hospital I was staying at freaked out I owned a SNES copy of Mortal Kombat 2 at age 17. It wasn't so much parents policing me and it was me being a somewhat understanding teenager by then since I was buying my own entertainment.

Although sometimes I'm surprised at how kids freak out when they see some stuff I have. They refuse to play Tekken because it's got a "teen label on it." Now I respect their parents wishes for me not to show them certain things, but I do often like to at least say "they should broaden their views then the disney channel."

Neither of my parents ever tried to limit my access to these things. Maybe I am a product of their upbringing but I, too, share their view. Furthermore children would learn of genitalia and see gore elsewhere even if I was to limit them.

IF the kids want to look, they will find a way. Nothing stopped me from looking at porn on the internet when I was a kid... I knew everything about how the computer worked and my poor helpless mother was lost :)

Recently I sat down with my nephew and had a talk with him about internet porn. He is of the age now where he has had a couple of girlfriends etc (He is thirteen, fourteen soon). I asked him if he had watched any porn online, and he said that he had. The point of the conversation was to make sure he understood the difference between fantasy and how sex works in reality. Kids are smart, and will engage in a topic if you are up front with them about it and stay non judgmental. He asked me some questions about sex, and what the differences were between the real thing and some of the videos he had seen. I just explained clearly that porn is acting, and not to expect what happens in porn to be the way things turn out in real life. He had made some assumptions about the physicality of things that I set him straight on, and by the end of it I think he had a better idea of what to expect from sex and what it really is.

Also, I feel it important for kids to understand that there is nothing wrong with their urges and wanting to have sex. He knows know that if he does do it he has to be responsible, and understand that they are doing an adult thing so they need to be prepared for adult feelings and consequences.

My family is weird. They're really open and seemingly sex-positive, but have a weird arbitrary "talking about sex" hangup. They just don't discuss it. Ever. Most awkward topic to have to deal with when watching a show or film that has sex.

So how did my family deal with parental controls? They gave our doors locks.

For my future family I'm gonna do the same, except I'll make sure to also discuss any and everything my kids want to know.

My dad didn't give a shit, but my mom was like super-ultra-"holier than thou"-mega-Christain so the slightest little thing, regardless of whether or not it was in a video game, would set her off. It was all talk though. She would walk by room, see me shootin some dude in the face, fighting the devil, or watching a cutscene with an impossibly proportioned woman and go on some long asinine tirade and then walk away.

So yeah, I wasn't restricted when it came to games (or anything else for that matter). Annoyed, yes. But not restricted.

I started playing games back in the late 80s so there wasn't really much to get upset over. My parents didn't care about stuff like Night Trap. They just said it was stupid.

These days I have my own son (7) and we play games together. There are some games I won't let him see such as games with humans killing other humans (call of duty, Battle field etc.) but he can see the likes of Bio Hazard since that's all about Zombies. On the other hand there's no way I hell would I play Out Last in from of him, never mind let him play it. Man, that game is sick! But I like it :)

When it comes to nudity, well Japan has a different view upon that compared to the west so it's all good as long as there's no sex involved. We just laugh it off as something funny.

My mom never really limited or even monitored the media I consumed. She always knew that I was mature beyond my age and that I could tell fiction from reality. It wasn't so much a problem with games of the time, but I mainly grew up in the 80's during the era of the body count action flick and slasher horror movies. Whether that was good parenting or she just dodged a bullet there, I'll let you decide, but I haven't gone on any blood thirsty killing sprees....yet. I don't have any kids but if I did, I think I'd be much more involved and aware of the stuff they watch/play/listen to. Just a different time we live in now I guess.

I'm very torn. I caould always handle most stuff and my parents trusted me with stuff that was a bit above my age range and with internet usage and such. For the most part I'd like to think I validated that trust.

That being said I don't know if I would trust my own kids. I honestly feel like I'd be a pretty terrible parent, and my fear of ruining a child will almost certainly prevent me from having kids so this is all really hypothetical. However if I were to ever figure out that my kid was one of those obnoxious assholes screaming slurs at people in their online multiplayer I would take away their console with the quickness.

The future has some really interesting potential for this type of stuff. I would not be surprised if my generation was a bit better at keeping up with newer tech, and if that does wind up being the case how parents monitor their kids could be interesting, because a lot of what people my age got away with as kids was because our parents really had no idea what we could/would do on the internet.

Sheltering kids always seemed counter productive to me. Kids always seem to know or find out things regardless and it just leaves them unprepared. I am not saying you should expose your child to "bad" or just grown up things, I just think you shouldn't try to shelter them from it, just be there when they have questions and give them your view on whats right and wrong. There are many view points when it comes to this issue and mine is just mine, if you have the opposite, then I have no major qualms about that because I know it comes from the right place.

I was never into violent or "mature" video games growing up, so it wasn't really much of an issue. My little brother likes to play games like Call of Duty nowadays though, and while my mom doesn't stop him from playing them, she often has a disapproving look or tone toward violent games.

My Dad was partially responsible for me getting into video games as a kid, as he bought the family a Sega Genesis for Christmas one year and I still remember watching him play Shining Force. (Which was also largely responsible for my intense love affair with JRPGs.) I don't think he could give a crap what kinds of games I play, but it seems like he developed somewhat of a crotchety old man attitude toward games over the years and I get the impression he thinks I should stop playing video games and go do something more productive with my life. (Which may be partially true, but that's not directly the fault of video games.)

The stuff they wouldnt let me watch pre teen age was sex stuff in movies etc ... when I became a teenanger they pretty much left me to my own judgement. But I never was a kid that got into much trouble or anything of the sort so no involment was needed I suppose.

I was playing stuff like Resident Evil 2 on my PS1 when I ws like 9 years old; my parents didnt give a shit.

my mom played MK3 with me when I was 6

she was not very good at it but neither was I!

My parents weren't insane "Pokemon is the DEVIL!" parents but they did sorta restrict what I could and could not watch. They had to see PG-13 movies before I could watch them until I was like 10 or 11, for instance, and they were especially picky about movies with nudity in them. Violence? Fine. Nudity? NOPE.

I made a big fuss about them restricting me so much when I was 14 and 15, though, and eventually they were like "Fuggit! Whatever!" and that attitude kind of extended toward my brother and they stopped caring after that.

Two things struck me as odd. The first is that they jumped back and forth on what they thought was OK. One minute they would let me watch Jurassic Park, the next they were taking it away, and then a week later they'd give it back. What? The second is that I was far more likely to be allowed to watch something violent and R-rated if it was a movie that they liked. So the Terminator movies? Yep, I saw those. Aliens? Anything with vampires in it? My mom hated both so nope.

So, yeah. It was weird. I saw a lot more at my grandfather's house than I ever saw at my parent's house. I spent more time playing video games than anything.

Personally, if I ever have kids, I'll take R rated movies and M rated games on a case-by-case basis. PG-13 movies and T games? Who fucking cares?