What Will You Choose for Your Child: Some Porn or a Video Game?

Until this very moment I was absolutely sure that the majority of parents will choose video games for their children over porn or alcohol. But the results of a poll published by What They Play, a website aimed at educating parents what video games their children play, have just made me change my opinion. Yes, no matter how unbelievable this may sound, they actually claim that parents think that porn and alcohol are safer for their children than video games.

What They Play, the first product of What They Like network, positions itself as a guide on video games for parents. The website describes this or that game in a language accessible to parents who happen not to be gamers themselves. In addition to its main line of business, the site also features polls related to video games to see what parents think on this or that aspect of their children playing games.

This announcement actually refers to results of two separate polls but I was particularly impressed by the latest one, the one held last week. More than 1,600 respondents expressed their opinions on what they deemed to be the least acceptable activity for their children to indulge in while at a sleepover. The results were as follows: smoking marijuana (50%), playing the video game Grand Theft Auto (19%), watching pornography (17%), drinking beer (14%).

To me the results seem to be very surprising: I believe that if I had children myself I’d rather have them play video games than watch porn or drink alcohol. But at least it is reassuring to see parents still think that marijuana is the most dangerous of all but having both porn and alcohol considered safer than video games is very surprising (even though I am not an expert neither in parenting, nor in video gaming).

But at least the results prove one well-known fact: we are always afraid of things that we don’t understand and the more we mystify certain risks, the more dangerous they seem to be. As a result, video games that are a completely unknown field to the parents (who most certainly have some experience in their youth of watching porn, drinking beer and maybe even smoking a joint) are viewed as the most dangerous risk of all.

This poll also proves that sites like What They Play serve a good purpose when trying to educate parents of exactly what they should expect watching their children playing video games. So maybe demystifying various youth activities like online games and social networking should be the field we will see some new startups addressing in the near future to help parents understand their children better?