In the rock opera by The Who, Peter Townsend wrote a song called "Fiddle About" in which the drunken uncle of the storie's hero, Tommy, molests him while the parents are out of the home. The actual lyric is " And I'm doing exactly what I bleedin' well want to, Fiddling about, fiddling about, fiddle about." When I read stories about professionals and legislators "fiddling about" while children are injured it drives me to drink. The recent story of two "twenty-something" parents who were so addicted to online gaming that they failed to feed and care for their 11 and 22-month-old children offers an example of how professionals continue to fiddle when they should act. In the story Michael and Iana Straw neglected their children because they were addicted to the online game "Dungeons and Dragons." Investigators said that although there was food in the house; the parents would not stop playing the game long enough to feed and care for the children. While most of us find a story like this horrendous, and ample evidence that online gaming can be dangerous, the professionals just don't seem to get it. Legislators and professionals use criteria for the determination of whether danger exists that is far too scientific and based in proofs that allow far too many incidents to occur while they optimize their research. At some point we must take a look at the results in the real world and belay trying to figure out the exact reason why something works the way it does. We need to do something! In the story above from Fox (who owns MySpace, Google, and various other online distractions) they carefully mention that "experts" haven't convinced themselves that this is really a problem:
" Last month, experts at an American Medical Association meeting backed away from a proposal to designate video game addiction as a mental disorder, saying it had to be studied further. Some said the issue is like alcoholism, while others said there was no concrete evidence it's a psychological disease. [Computer Addiction however is a listed psychological disease.]
Patrick Killen, spokesman for Nevada Child Abuse Prevention, said video game addiction's correlation to child abuse is 'a new spin on an old problem.' "
Let's look at this from a real world point of view. A year ago this month, Amsterdam opened the first detox center for online video players. It is an eight week program for players who realize that the games have taken over their lives. Like alcoholics, there are a lot of folks who have not yet figured that out for themselves, therefore the true size of the cohort of addicted players is unknown. China too has realized that this is a problem and opened clinics to treat internet addiction in over 1500 patients since 2004. The Chinese Government evidently does not have as many experts to slow things down. Perhaps they were stirred into action because of stories like the one of Korean Parents letting their child die from suffocation while they played a video game. China recently took steps to limit the amount of time a person can play online. Showing an understanding of what motivates players, they told Internet Providers that they must cut online credits by half when users go over three hours per day. I don't find that any more intrusive by my government than a 70 mph speed limit. This may be the only time in my life that I have taken the stand that a Communist government had a better idea the the U.S.A.
Meanwhile the pointy heads who think they are so much smarter than parents continue to defend video games. Ben Kuchera at Ars Technica says that nothing would have been said if the aforementioned Korean parents had gone to a ball game. That, of course is not true, leaving an infant alone for any amount of time is a crime in most states of the United States. A better analogy would be if the family dog attacked and killed a child. If that happened we would dispose of the dog. In spite of the fact that: most dogs don't kill their owner's children; he was just doing what animals do; and if he were better watched by his owners the dog would never do it again - we kill the dog. There are no second chances. The gamers want to say: "Hey, it's not the game, it's not the internet, it's the parent's fault." In spite of repeated examples of how gaming and computer addiction is hurting our kids they refuse to take the same hard line as we take with the offending animal. I feel the same way about video games, social networking, and the internet in general. Having them in your house with a child of any age is the same as having an animal in your house that once attacked a child. You can't give that dog to your uncle who has a farm. The liability of owning a dog of that sort is to great - even if local law would allow it. (It doesn't) Each of them, video games, social networking, and the internet, has caused harm in the past and will do it again. But . . . and you may not know this . . . the purveyors of MySpace and similar companies covered by the Comunications Decency Act are specifically protected from liability. Their dog can just keep on biting - and they have immunity.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/06/20/news_6127866.html
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2005/6/21/547 Ben Kuchera Ars Technica
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/03/health/webmd/main1773956.shtml
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/12/business/addicts.php
http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUST29847420070409
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