Thyunda said:
The things in GTA exist in real life. Guns kill. Drugs are harmful. People are dangerous. There is no advantage to 'protecting' children from this kind of thing. I would far rather my children grow up with games like GTA to give some warning about what life can be like. I think you'd agree, that you'd rather sit down and let them play GTA, after telling them that what's fun in the game, is fatal in real life.
I'd rather let them simulate life like that in a videogame than learn that guns kill from experience.
First off, I just want to say that I don't think GTA is very good model of the real world especially for a child (similar to how I don't think Scarface would be either). That's not to say I think a child should only be exposed to sugar and candy and unicorns, just that running over pedestrians on a sidewalk or killing hundreds of police officers or picking up prostitutes and choosing sexual acts or beating people with dildos isn't exactly a pure example of the world. The real world should be lived, not watched or played or read. Media is escape not a giant lesson machine.
I wouldn't want to expose a child to guns or drugs or sex before a child could handle and I believe most children can't (I'm not against letting say a 14 year old play a mature game like GTA, but anything younger is territory I wouldn't enter). That's exactly why I mentioned games that can be fun and teach something real to children under 14. There aren't real lessons to take from GTA, especially any lessons that can't be taught in another game with a T rating that will just as easily teach a child that guns can kill people (of course that as a lesson is pretty easy to teach a child with any media).
A child who learns what sex is from a video game is a child who would have no understanding of sex. Video games do not treat sex maturely enough to really show sex as what it is (at least not most games). Same goes for sex from movies or television or books (although books tend to get the closest in all aspects).
As a note: 14 isn't a magic number, just a generalization. Age would depend entirely on the child.
My entire point is that any child old enough to understand a lot of what happens, but not old enough to handle adult situations (ages 7-14 in my opinion, someone who could say understand what a bad touch is without understanding how molestation can affect a victim for the rest of the victim's life) isn't a good fit for GTA or any adult series. Although the definition of adult series isn't entirely dictated by rating (some M games, like Mortal Kombat, aren't all that serious with how they are portrayed so I don't see that as mattering as much. I let my niece and nephew play Mortal Kombat and they're both 8 while their 2 year old sister watches, that's more comically exaggerated than anything).
Example of what I mean: A girl goes through puberty and believes she's sexually ready. Until she has sex, gets pregnant and her boyfriend dumps her. This can be remedied by telling her to use a condom if she wants to have sex, but if she doesn't understand the consequences or just isn't mature enough to care about them (this is a problem with a lot of teens, they know pregnancy and STDs can happen, but they just don't care or don't believe it will happen to them), she isn't ready for sex.
Same goes for exposure to sex, drugs, guns, murder, etc. A child can understand these, but a lot of children can't deal with them properly as they just aren't mature enough.
