Why is "thinking of the children" even a thing?

[Arslan Aladeen]

Because of The Simpsons.

Thank you. I was wondering when or if this answer was going to come up.

 

[Meatspinner]

Parents are irrational creature that make most of their decisions based on fear. That's why

 

[Twilight_guy]

Thanks for the thoughtful responses, everyone.

I think this argument depends heavily on intellectualize the world and ignoring anything that can't be proved with formal logic. Most people have some sense of the answer to this question already and I think you know the answer to this question already.

If something can't be proven with formal logic, though, I see no reason to accept it as fact. There might be an answer we take as intuitive, but that doesn't necessarily make it correct.

Besides, there are at least a few things (the first one that comes to mind being 'pink is for women') many attribute to 'instinct' that are really just a result of societal imprint.

Yeah, but just because its socially constructed doesn't make it less valid. Morals can't be proved with formal logic and are social constructs, that doesn't mean that you can intellectualize it and say "I'm going to murder people because I don't believe killing is wrong since you can't prove it with logic"

 

[Maze1125]

I have never once seen any kind of study confirming (or denying, for that matter) that subjects traditionally considered not suitable for kids do any kind of psycological harm to them.

Really?
Because The Escapist posts them quite often. Here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/121055-Research-Finds-Cumulative-Negative-Effects-in-Violent-Videogames]'s one of them just now, and it's not the only one, there's one every couple of months, and those are just the ones The Escapist bothers to report on.

 

[Lugbzurg]

Because there's no such thing as "personal responsibility" in today's society. We all need to blame something else for our problems and mistakes. I definitely think there is certain media children should be kept far away from, but it's their parents' responsibility to make sure they don't get exposed.

Thank you!

Parents need to do their job and stop demanding people to make their content cater more to people who are too young for it in the first place. Besides, I still hear about people who played Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Mortal Kombat, Conker's Bad Fur Day, and plenty of other adult games, yet turned out just fine.

 

[StriderShinryu]

I personally don't see any issue at all with wanting the world at large, especially in terms of media, to be more cognizant of the existence of children. You can be the best and most attentive parent in the world, but you can't always be 5 steps aheasd of what your child might see or do when exposed to the real world. Unless you're going to lock your child up in their room and preapprove everything they experience, there's still only so far that being a `good parent` can get you.

Children are in a constant state of development and learning. As a parent you can teach and guide and direct, but you ultimately don`t have any control over what the world at large exposes your child to on an incidental basis so I don`t see a problem with wanting the `world` to take a step back and consider the potential audience.

 

[FalloutJack]

It's a euphemism for "Remember that we want to control our children and mold them into little versions of ourselves so that we don't lose authority over them".

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

This is only an anecdote, and one example, but watching it made me realize how important it is to at least frame your children's experiences and to put them in context. Okay:

There was a guy I knew about 7 years ago who had a kid that was 7 when I met him and 10 when we parted ways. Every day, when he got home from school he would turn on the PS2 and play GTA 3 or Vice City. The father told me that the kid knew it wasn't real, and that it wasn't anything to worry about. This part is the "correlation is not causation" part, but each year of school he was in more fights and altercations than the year before. It didn't hit me until about a month his 10th birthday. The three of us were in the backyard watching skydivers come down (airport very close). The kid says, verbatim, "Dad, I really wish I had a sniper rifle so I could shoot that guy down, and hear the 'BAM' when he hit the ground, then we could use a flamethrower on his body to make sure he was dead". Dad says "you don't do that son, it isn't right" and nothing else.

Now that doesn't prove anything, but it struck me that parents definitely need to maximize the time they spend introducing the various concepts of life and humanity, including media, lest they not even understand the finality of death at age 10 or how heinously wrong murder is.

That said, I don't personally feel it's the governments place to do anything about that, and I'm sure it's parents who have their TV as full-time babysitters who support this kind of thing. Don't have kids if you can't even be arsed to introduce them to the world properly.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Because kids can easily misinterpret and then imitate the things they see. If you took, say, a 9-year old to a screening of Machete you would have a hard time explaining to little Timmy why the audience was laughing all the way through as people got decapitated, crucified, blasted with shotguns, impaled with various objects etc. Kids would take it all seriously and likely lose a night's sleep, since they wouldn't understand the context and the concept of irony.

There are perfectly good reasons for the existence of age limits, I'm not going to argue with them. I don't think it's so much about what traumatizes kids, that differs from person to person, but more of a matter of comprehension and understanding