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It's Wake Up Time for Parents

When Senator Joe Lieberman and I unveiled the 11th Annual Video Game Report Card in Washington, DC, a lot of people were surprised by what we said. In the past, we've been tough (but fair) on the people and companies who make and sell video games. The fact is, in years past, they deserved it. But this year is different.

Oh, don't get me wrong - the industry powers have a long way to go. The rating system still isn't as accurate as it should be, and some retailers still seem to care a lot more about profits than the welfare of kids. But lately we see the industry making important strides.

In years past, the big box retailers like Best Buy, Target, and Wal-Mart, didn't do a very good job of keeping Mature-rated games away from kids. This year, in our sting survey, the small stores that specialize in video games still let young children buy M-rated games about half the time. We gave them an F. On the other hand, the big box retailers received a perfect record. It was easy to give them an A. The big box retailers have educated their employees and proven how easy it is to protect kids.

Also encouraging are the console makers. Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony all released new platforms in the last year or so, and each of these consoles includes parental controls, something we've requested for years. These companies got an A too. Furthermore, the game makers and most of the retailers make a good, though not perfect, effort to educate parents about the video game ratings, earning them a B.

All of this praise for the industry surprised the reporters who cover the Report Card. But another grade we gave created even more of a buzz. That's because this year, for the first time ever, we gave a grade to parents: INCOMPLETE.

The fact is the tools and information parents need to protect their kids are mostly available. And yet, as our survey of parents and their children showed, too many of us parents don't do a very good job of providing a healthy media diet for our kids. For instance, while nearly two-thirds of surveyed parents said they had rules about how much time their children may spend playing video games, only one third of their children said they had such rules. When issues such as obesity, addiction, and impaired brain development are increasingly linked to playing video games by unassailable research, these rules seem more important than ever.

To be fair, the industry still sends mixed messages, providing a rating system that recommends keeping certain games away from kids while at the same time denying their games have any effect on kids. The incomplete grade means we parents are failing our kids, but it's not all our fault. Well, it's time to wake up, folks. We can't count on a for-profit industry to do our work for us. Let's get MediaWise before it's too late.

David Walsh, Ph.D. is the founder of the MediaWise Movement, a program of the National Institute on Media and the Family (www.mediawise.org). His latest book, No! Why Kids Need It and Ways We Can Say It (Free Press) is available in bookstores on January 9, 2007.