Parental Accountability
A 13-year-old boy in China committed suicide about a year and a half ago by jumping from his 24th floor apartment. According to this article from AP via Yahoo! News:
The parents of a 13-year-old Chinese boy who they say jumped to his death from a tall building after playing one of the popular “Warcraft” online games for 36 hours straight are suing its Chinese distributor, a news report said Friday.
Zhang Xiaoyi died on Dec. 27, 2004, leaving behind a suicide note saying he wanted “to join the heroes of the game he worshipped,” the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
It said Zhang’s parents, who live in Tianjin, just east of Beijing, are seeking 100,000 yuan ($12,500) from Aomeisoft, the Chinese distributor of “Warcraft: Orcs and Humans.”
The suit says Aomeisoft failed to include a warning that the game’s U.S. maker rates it as suitable only for players above age 13, according to Xinhua.
While I certainly understand the parents anger and sorrow for the loss of their child, I can’t understand why they would allow their child to play a game - any game - for 36 hours straight. Where were they while their child was playing for 36 hours straight? Shouldn’t the parents be held accountable? That would be like suing a record company because the listener lost hearing from enjoying their music at deafening levels, or suing a restaurant because the hot coffee was too hot. Hello? IT’S HOT! Put some ice in there! Pry your kid away from the computer! Hello? Get a clue! While no one would expect someone to commit suicide upon overplaying a video game, there are obvious ill-affects of playing a video game for 36 hours straight such as severe fatigue, hunger, dehydration, etc. People rely on warning labels and alarms to tell them what to do, but what they should be doing is educating themselves to learn how to make rational decisions.
As a parent, I feel it’s my essential obligation to teach Sierra right, wrong, and limits. If I were the parent of this poor kid then I would’ve pulled him off of the computer long before the 36 hour mark. Blaming poor parenting on missing warning labels is such a cop-out, and I hope the Chinese government sees this case as nothing more than a mask for just that - cop-out parents.
I apologize if my opinion seems harsh - I really do feel for the family of that boy - but there are often times when we need to step into our child’s life and simply tell them “no,” which is perfectly OK to do. Like I said before, teaching limits - not just setting, but teaching - is one of the primary responsibilties of being a parent. We can’t just expect labels to tell us how to live - that’s something we need to learn from each other.
Look, ma! The Horde FTW!
PS: This is a far stretch from the main issue of this article but it needs to be said - Sony sucks.
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June 1st, 2006 at 8:45 pm
Video games don’t kill people, psychosis kills people. I’ve been following several incidents of people blaming entertainment media for the downfall of society and frankly I’m getting a little sick of this cheap cop-out crap. If your kid jumps off a building because the little electronic people inside the computer told him to, then your child was insane. Just like those two little bastards in Colorado who shot up their school after listening to a Rammstein album. TV, music, video games, and movies don’t make people violent uncontrollable sociopaths. The truth is, no one knows what makes people violent uncontrollable sociopaths. Some say it’s genetic, while others say it’s their upbringing, I say it doesn’t matter what the cause, the result is the problem at hand. If your child gets sent home from school for habitually biting the other children and jabbing his pencil into his hand until it bleeds, there’s something wrong with him, you have to take him back and get a refund or something. Trade him in for a new child that doesn’t want open up the kitty to see what’s inside. In all seriousness, mental instability isn’t caused by music and video games. There are crazy people in this world who don’t listen to heavy metal, and don’t even own a computer. There are also plenty of people who do listen to heavy metal and play video games, who turn out fine. Hell, I like to do both at the same time and I’ve done it for a hell of a lot longer than 36 straight hours, and I’ve never killed anyone or tried to commit suicide. I admit that once I found myself walking towards a parked car with the intent to steal it after playing the original Grand Theft Auto for 20 hours straight, but I caught myself after the first couple of steps and realized that video games and real life are two different things, that run on two different systems, and no one has come out with a patch that makes the one work the same as the other. Yet….
June 1st, 2006 at 9:38 pm
Uh, hello? Let’s not forget the Virtual Boy, the most realistic life emulator ever. ‘Nuff said.