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Survey: Parents More Concerned About GTA Than Alcohol, Pornography
by Eric Caoili
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August 11, 2008
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When asked for a single choice, parents are more concerned about their children’s exposure to games such as Grand Theft Auto than alcohol, violence, and pornography, according to a recent online poll conducted by family-centric consumer game site What They Play.
A separate survey also showed that most parents considered viewing violence as more acceptable than exposure to content involving sex and sexuality.
The initial poll, conducted April 4-10, 2008, found that, asked 1,266 participants what they are most offended by in video games. 37% responded that they were most offended by a man and a woman having sex, whereas 27% answered “two men kissing,” 25% responded “a graphically severed head,” and 9% chose “multiple use of the F-word.”
The second poll, conducted August 1-6, 2008, and - like the first - only tracking single answers, as opposed to letting people pick multiple choices - asked over 1,600 respondents what they’d be most concerned about their 17-year-old child indulging in while at a sleepover.
49% revealed that they’re more apprehensive about their child smoking marijuana, and 19% responded that they are most concerned with their children playing Grand Theft Auto. 16% answered that they are most disturbed by their children watching pornography, while 14% are most concerned with them drinking beer.
Said What They Like president John Davison: “These poll results demonstrate that parents are as apprehensive about their children’s media diets as they are about traditional social issues such as alcohol, drugs, violence and sex."
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Factors like the audience of this particular site being who they are, the simplicity of the polling, and the potential for leading question phrasing are all reasons to take these results with a grain of salt.
Point being...it's a poll. You can twist a poll to state just about anything.
I could make my own poll, same question, and the answer would be 1)GTA, 2)Crack Cocaine, 3)Pot, 4)Meth, so on, until I have 1 answer for GTA and a dozen separate drugs for the remaining answers. There is only a 19% sample that would answer GTA. But the remaining 81% would be divided amongst whatever illegal drugs they considered most dangerous/plausible to reach their kids. I could then make the conclusion of:
"Survey: Parents More Concerned About GTA Than PCP, Acid, Red Bull."
Even though I think that most of this comes from ignorance. They only being fed bad news about GTA4 from the media (people blaming crimes on a video game, oh please), and its something most parents don't understand (so its scary). The other things are more easy to understand and more familiar issues they think can handle.
At least, thats my take on such issues ;)