As a parent I would be perfectly happy with banning GTA 5

After Grand Theft Auto is banned in one country a reader admits that he wouldn’t be upset if the same happened here, in order to protect his son.

Earlier this week there was a news story about the country of Tajikistan banning Grand Theft Auto, as well as Counter-Strike. This was met with much patronising comment by a lot of gamers, but I have to say it doesn’t sound that incomprehensible to me. I don’t know why they banned it, maybe their reasons weren’t good, but as a father of a seven-year-old son I can completely understand why people would be concerned about the video games their children play.

A reader commented only last week about how the average age of players on Call Of Duty used to be in the teens. That was certainly my experience and if they’ve now moved on to Fortnite and other free-to-play games then I imagine it’s a very different, and more enjoyable, experience. It’s definitely the case that most people on GTA Online seem to be far younger than they should be, judging by the age rating.

When you’re a kid the one thing you want to do above all is be treated as an adult and do all the forbidden things that adults get up to. Sex and violence in movies and video games is usually a kid’s first introduction into many concepts they’re too young for and I’m not going to say that’s completely unhealthy, but there’s a line somewhere and in my opinion Grand Theft Auto crosses it.

My boy is not allowed to play GTA 5, but I know for a fact he has at friends’ and probably behind my back in the house as well. What worries me is that while adults can see it as a parody of the worst of Americana, to a child all that parody and satire goes completely over their head and they take everything at face value.

The language is a strong as it’s possible to be, the treatment of women is awful (it makes sense in that the men are all terrible people but even so), and the violence is unrelenting and treated as fun and amusing. Criminal activities, including stealing and drug-dealing, are treated as normal and without any moral consequence, if there even is a story context when playing GTA Online.

I don’t think I’m being a pearl-clutching prude to say I don’t want my seven-year-old playing that sort of game.

But, like I said, he has. Despite my best attempts to stop him. It’s not even that I want a ban, and I certainly wouldn’t campaign for one, but if it happened I would be perfectly happy. I would instantly sacrifice the ability for me to play the game if it meant that kids couldn’t. I don’t think that’s unreasonable and I’m sure many parents would agree.

In today’s world there is practically no way to stop kids from accessing every kind of sex and violence you can imagine, and I don’t even want to think about what kind of porn he might have watched already.

Of course, I’m sure plenty of people will pipe up with ‘It never did me any harm’ but when parents reading this were kids we didn’t have a game of the sophistication and complexity of GTA 5. The internet either didn’t exist or was in its early days and extreme content was nowhere near as easy to get hold of.

I watch the news in the last few months, and it is made very clear to me that we aren’t getting more peaceful or understanding as a society, but instead the opposite. Are video games part of the problem? I don’t know, but I know they’re not helping. Especially not GTA 5.

By reader Bors