# of Video Game Hours for YOUR Children

[Coys1882]

I'm not looking for links or studies which have determined or recommended the proper amount of video game time for children. What I am looking for is a baseline to compare our child's hours of play to yours. I value the input of peers and community members much more than websites or magazine articles.

• How many hours a week do your children play?
• What ages are your children?
• Do you take notice of the ESRB ratings when choosing games for your kids?
• Do you play with your kids all the time? Or does the child play with you out of the room?

If you're interested in our child's patterns:
- My son is 5
- He's allowed up to an hour a day IF he's been good, finished his homework, or it's the weekend.
- He only plays the LEGO series games or racing games for children (Cars, MarioKart, Sonic Racing)
- I'll play sometimes with him but mostly he plays alone.

Thanks for your input!

[Icon]

We have a kid on the way... I'm a bigtime gamer, my wife not at all.

- My kids will likely be allowed an hour or so per day until they're 8 or 9 yrs old.
- I'll take note of ESRB ratings/etc... but odds are I'll keep in touch with what's in the game more than just the rating and make a judgement call anyway.
- Going to try to play with them as much as possible... but it's inevitable that they'll play solo too.

[Northendzone]

my son is 9 and daughter is 6

historically we have allowed video/computer games to only be played from friday after school until sunday at 5 and they can play when school is closed. Based on otehr parents i have talked too this si a common approach. the weeknights are too short to play video games.

historically we have not paid attention to ratings as the boy has wanted to play pokemon, lego star wars, hcoeky etc. duaghter is playing girl themed games.

i am struggling to get some insight with respect to letting my son play COD:MW3......

[photon]

My son is 7, and we have a 2 hour max per day rule for screen time (which includes video games, TV, iPad, DS, whatever).

I do let him go over that every so often if he's doing art in a drawing program.

He probably averages an hour a day, some days he gets close to his max, many days he's outside playing so doesn't do anything in the afternoon.

Mornings he usually gets 15 - 30 minutes after he gets dressed and has breakfast and stuff before we head out the door.

Most of the time he plays alone (we're usually in the room though) but sometimes I play with him.

Games he basically plays Minecraft and Pokemon on his DS. More complex games on the Wii he "plays" by watching me play (he isn't very good at them and gets frustrated very quickly and doesn't want to play).

ETA: Ratings I mostly ignore, I always play the game or watch the movie/show before he gets it.

[sclitheroe]

It's probably different with girls..I have a 7 and a 5 year old who are as interested in their toys, arts and crafts, and other stuff as video games. They have unfettered access to the PS3 and a bunch of age appropriate titles (Sonic Racing, the PS3 Move titles, some simple games from the PS3 online store, etc), and I don't think I've ever seen them play for more than an hour on their own before they put it up.

I'm unlikely to put hard limits on usage given their behaviour patterns - I'd encourage lots of diversity in activity before simply setting hard caps on any one activity as a general rule, so its unlikely I'd ever actually set time limits.

Edit: on the computer front, I will never set limits, unless they are just goofing off for hours on end on Flash gaming sites. If they're reading, researching, looking at pictures of animals, drawing, playing with an electronic keyboard, etc, I won't ever discourage that. The world is so digital now that I firmly believe limiting access to technology can be as damaging as anything that could happen letting them use it too much.

[Teh_Bandwagoner]

Whoa flashback to when I was a kid, watching Kid Street for 30 mins before school, and having unlimited TV access after school for the endless hours of Family Ties, Full House, Perfect Strangers, Family Matters or whatever flavour of 80s sitcom was popular at the time. Then getting my Nintendo when I was 11, and having endless access to Mario and Tetris.

Even though I took full advantage of having zero limits on TV and games, I think I turned out alright. Well...except for my horrible attention span and incessant urge to kill all humans.

[burn_this_city]

My childhood consisted of maximum one 8 hour session per day. Honestly between tv and video games I probably sat in front of a screen for 5-6 hours a night, plus all day on weekends. If I could go back in time I would.

[bradster57]

My parents didn't allow much, if any, gaming. They never bought me a system. I'm totally screwed up now, playing hours of vintage games I missed out on as a kid. Emulators, roms, NES, SNES, Genesis, 64... It's bad.

My son is 18 months now, and I think I'll allow gaming in moderation for him. Maybe the rule is he must be in some sort of extra curricular activities like sports or whatever he is interested in to be allowed to game.

[Rathji]

My kids are 4 and 2.

They play iPhone games for 20-30 mins a day, on average I would guess. Anything much more than that is beyond them. My 4 year old knows that she is allowed to spend as much time as she wants on the computer, if she is typing the alphabet or other words (not keyboard mashing) or drawing pictures in Paint and usually gets about 30 mins before she gets bored.

edit: like sclitheroe said, I try to encourage any computer use and for a while she was really into minecraft, but got frustrated with the controls, so it didnt last for more than a month or so. I think I might try and rekindle that spark and see if she has improved.

[photon]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

I'm unlikely to put hard limits on usage given their behaviour patterns - I'd encourage lots of diversity in activity before simply setting hard caps on any one activity as a general rule, so its unlikely I'd ever actually set time limits.

Edit: on the computer front, I will never set limits, unless they are just goofing off for hours on end on Flash gaming sites. If they're reading, researching, looking at pictures of animals, drawing, playing with an electronic keyboard, etc, I won't ever discourage that. The world is so digital now that I firmly believe limiting access to technology can be as damaging as anything that could happen letting them use it too much.

Good point with the computer, if there's diverse things then I'm more lenient (like I mentioned with drawing), but I have the "hard" limit just because it's easier to communicate to a very literal kid.

And my kid would totally sit and play flash games or watch minecraft youtube videos or just play minecraft for 8 hours if I let him, so after a 45 minute span I'll usually tell him to do something different (draw, educational game, etc), or go draw or go outside or play lego or something else.

[Cluelessboy]

My neighbour lets his 7 yr old boy play for 12+ hours on weekends and he plays GTA4, mafia 2, COD, gears, resident evil, etc.

[Teh_Bandwagoner]

Originally Posted by Cluelessboy

My neighbour lets his 7 yr old boy play for 12+ hours on weekends and he plays GTA4, mafia 2, COD, gears, resident evil, etc.

LOL hey that kid's alright!

[burn_this_city]

Originally Posted by Cluelessboy

My neighbour lets his 7 yr old boy play for 12+ hours on weekends and he plays GTA4, mafia 2, COD, gears, resident evil, etc.

He's going to be real good when he gets older.

[Russic]

Great thread. My son is only 2 so I'm not quite into this realm yet, but he's starting to express a high level of interest in my iPad games. He's currently going through an airplane obsession and will play flight control for 15 minutes whispering "airpain" the whole time. I suppose he doesn't play it as much as he watches the planes fly around and crash into each other.

In my experience kids have a funny way of throwing curve balls into my planning structure, but at this point I'm planning for the rules to be something along these lines:

- After school until dinner (approx. 2 hours) is free time to watch tv or play video games
- I'll probably use the esrb rating system as a strong guideline. Exceptions will be looked at on a case-by-case basis, but mature games won't be considered until at least the teenage years.
- After dinner is home work time. Given that kids tend to not have much homework, I would say whatever time is left over also belongs to them.

You can only draw on the experiences of yourself and those close to you for stuff like this. My parents were very lenient about video game/tv time and I was given a fair amount of control. While I did spend a great deal of time in front of the idiot box I was very social, played sports and did reasonably well in school. I know friends who were under much tighter restrictions and I can't say they came out a whole lot differently than I did.

If my boy can grow up to be respectful, polite and reasonably hard-working I don't really care how much time he spends playing games.

[kirant]

Not planning on having kids for a while, but this is what I'd imagine my response would be:

• How many hours a week do your children play?

Until 10 or so, about an hour or two a day, provided homework, chores, and other basic things are done. Even past that, I'd be keeping a private watch of when they're playing and when they're working...I know almost every trick to feigning work (I used to be one of those kids who'd almost always have Alt-F4 ready, would have the menu bar closed, and would jump around my work document to look like I'm getting somewhere). I had to play a bit of catch up responsibility wise during my grade 10 year and hopefully keeping a tight eye on my kid would prevent them from having to do the same thing.

• Do you take notice of the ESRB ratings when choosing games for your kids?

I would, but I'd take it with a grain of salt. The ESRB ratings are pretty screwy at the best of times. Likely would be more of a relationship of "I'll play ahead of you and make decisions until I get too old for video games. When/If that happens, you're probably responsible enough to decide what games you should play anyways". Most T rated games are pretty good about their content when you find online disclosure of their workings and most M rated games...well, until you're 18, you have to ask mommy or daddy (or older siblings) to buy it for you anyways.

• Do you play with your kids all the time? Or does the child play with you out of the room?

I sure hope I'm able to play games with them. Honestly hope I end up being a parent they can play some hockey and games with.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Russic

If my boy can grow up to be respectful, polite and reasonably hard-working I don't really care how much time he spends playing games.

Yup.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by kirant

I would, but I'd take it with a grain of salt. The ESRB ratings are pretty screwy at the best of times. Likely would be more of a relationship of "I'll play ahead of you and make decisions until I get too old for video games. When/If that happens, you're probably responsible enough to decide what games you should play anyways". Most T rated games are pretty good about their content when you find online disclosure of their workings and most M rated games...well, until you're 18, you have to ask mommy or daddy (or older siblings) to buy it for you anyways.

you see yourself getting too old for video games? i honestly believe and hope that when i'm in my 70's, i'm beating down little brats in Battlefield 22 or Team Fortress 17

[Cluelessboy]

Originally Posted by Teh_Bandwagoner

LOL hey that kid's alright!

The sad thing is too many parents are letting kids at this age play violent games. Sorry but kids under 10 shouldnt be playing GTA or resident evil games, they should be playing educational games that benefit their learning.

[burn_this_city]

Originally Posted by Cluelessboy

The sad thing is too many parents are letting kids at this age play violent games. Sorry but kids under 10 shouldnt be playing GTA or resident evil games, they should be playing educational games that benefit their learning.

Why? I played violent games at that age. Did you play a lot of educational games at that age?

[CaptainCrunch]

How about 0 junior, thats my xbox, if you want to play a game get a damn job and buy your own xbox.

And besides for christ's sakes, theres a whole world out there, and lots of yard work to be done, get out of my sight and take your mother with you.

Frackin kids.