Grand Theft Childhood authors Cheryl Olson, Lawrence Kutner: Parents often ignore game ratings

Even if ESRB  has reported that the number of parents using the rating scheme for video games are increasing, there’s still a lot more out there that are still unsure what to do with the said ratings.

According to Cheryl Olson and Lawrence Kutner, authors of Grand Theft Childhood, parents more often than not ignore these ratings. Read more on this in the full article.

ESRB reported that there’s a growing number of parents who are using the ratings on video games when buying them. Alongside this, the BBFC has also opened up a website to guide parents accordingly on video games.

But even with such developments happening regarding video games and its ratings, there’s are still parents out there who disregard it. This is what Cheryl Olson and Lawrence Kutner said in their book, Grand Theft Childhood.

In their book, they said that even if parents were “aware of the ESRB rating system, they didn’t always pay attention to it”. Even if games had M and T ratings on the cover, the parents would just rely on their children’s own judgment.

Though most of them might have strict regulations about playing video games in their household, the parents know that their children might be able to play prohibited games in another child’s place.

Olson and Kutner added that almost all of the parents they were able to talk with agreed with the age categories and ratings set by ESRB, but only for other children not theirs. They actually would let their own kid play games with ratings higher than they’re supposed to.

This is certainly an interesting point raised by the two authors. Now, if you guys are itching to share you thoughts, feel free to do so with the space down below.

Via Game Politics