Assessing the Risks


According to Deborah Aho Williamson's research in 2005, 45 percent of American households contain some kind of video game system, and a good portion of those have Internet connections. You can play interactive games from your home computer, and games are even available on some cell phones.

As kids become teens and are left alone in the house more often, they might spend hours playing games, and parents need to know how to regulate which games they play and how they behave in those gaming situations.

Interactive gaming can carry these risks:

  • Harassment through text messages or voice chat

  • Contact with predators

  • Exposure to inappropriate game content, including violence and sexual content

  • Addictionadults and children can become addicted to online games and gambling

Although gaming sites contain many serious gamers who don't want to waste their time chatting or socializing, as interactive game popularity rises, younger and more casual users as well as many more women are joining this culture and using gaming sites as social networking sites.

Think About It

"Can you play next week?"

"No, we're going on vacation."

"Oh, is that a long way from where you live?"

"Only about 25 miles north of here."

"Do you want to call me later?"

"Sure..."

These are typical of the kinds of seemingly casual comments that can help someone locate a gamer. If your child calls, the predator has your child's phone number. People generally don't teach kids to not call people, they just teach them not to give out their phone number. That's a mistakeyou have to teach both, because with today's technology, by calling somebody else you are handing them your phone number in many cases.


For many children, talking to people while playing a game is just part of the game's fantasy world. This can make it a lot riskier to talk to somebody over a headset in a game setting than to talk to a stranger on the phone because kids are so wrapped up in the game that their focus is not on the conversation. When focusing on the action, children might not stop to consider what the "friend" is asking, but just blurt out information without thinking.



Look Both Ways. Help Protect Your Family on the Internet
Look Both Ways: Help Protect Your Family on the Internet
ISBN: 0735623473
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 157
Authors: Linda Criddle

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