Working Brain + Time = This

I knew I was going to have a unique day when the first thing I see on my computer was this. For the lazy people out there it's an article about a mom who bought her kids a Nintendo DS, which then turned them into cello-ignoring monsters. At first I took this article seriously; here was a situation where a video game system tore a family out of its natural rhythm causing a great amount of distress. However, I began to look deeper into the article and I found some pieces that didn't feel right to me. After a little digging, I found out that the article's writer and subject, Rosie Millard, was exactly the kind of person I hate.

Rosie Millard is a moron.

Now I'm not saying that Rosie Millard lacks any intelligence, that she has not led a successful life, or anything like that. What I am saying, is the Rosie Millard lacks the ability to think ahead, to see potential problems in the future and to plan for them. Mrs. Millard bought a single Nintendo DS for the family to share, that's her, her husband, and her four children (although I really don't think the two year old should be playing anything with a screen). Now this Nintendo DS has twenty games with it, which is a very large number (even bargain bin DS games cost upwards of $10 when not bought from sketchy online sites in Hong Kong). So we have a lot of subjects wanting play time, a large number of games to play, and one game player. What these really means is that you have a very desirable toy with a variety of activities involved (so you don't get bored and do something else, you just pop in a new game) and a whole lot of people who want to play with it.

Let me put this another way. My brother and I, that's two people, fought constantly over who could play the NES and the two games we had for it. Less people, a worse system, less variety, and we still fought.

What was she expecting?

I wouldn't label Mrs. Millard as a moron for just this one offense. No, it would take something far more ridiculous than that. Something grand, something that just seems like common sense, something like this. 45,000 pounds in debt. Not college debt, not house debt. 45,000 pounds of >200 pound haircut debt. Yeah.

As my final piece of evidence, I give you Mrs. Millard's calls to higher authorities on the matter at hand. Mrs. Millard namedrops Dr. Susan Greenfield and Dr. Tanya Byron, the latter a name that many European gamers are very familiar with. Dr. Tanya Byron is the woman behind the "Byron Review", an independent review funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that was looking into the potential dangers that video games and the internet held for children. Before beginning the review, Dr. Byron, a leading child psychologist, aggressively maintained that video games desensitized children to violence. After the review, Dr. Byron has declared herself publicly as an ally and friend of the video game industry.

Then we have Dr. Susan Greenfield, one of Britain's leading neuroscientists who recently began to investigate the impact of video games and internet on the brains of young adults. Dr. Greenfield theorizes that playing video games causes children to forgo identity building, so that in a few years we'll have a large population group that is having identity crisis'.

By the way, I love this article. The way the author describes Dr. Greenfield makes me feel like she's some kind of villain from Batman. My favorite quote from the article has to be this one:

"Her theory goes like this. The more we play games, the less time there is for learning specific facts and working out how those facts relate to each other."

Really? I mean really? So all those puzzles in my games were actually random? That my pressing a button had no correlation with what occurred onscreen? That knowing that my foe was using a fire attack meant that he would most likely be fire immune and would probably take extra damage from an ice spell?

Video Games are literally nothing but finding out facts and how they relate to each other. Even a first-person shooter teaches the player that their enemies will die a lot faster if you shoot them in the head than if you shoot them in the leg.

I'm sorry, but this is really one of the most laughable theories I have heard of in a long time.

Back to my point, Rosie Millard didn't do her research. Mrs. Miller was just looking at the Nintendo DS as a quick fix solution, to occupy her kids time with no repercussions. In essence, she was looking at the system as a magic quiet box that lets you have a few hours without having to deal with her children, and that's not what a video game system is. A video game system is a means of entertainment, like a TV or a book, and just like those two, parents should monitor their children's use with them. You don't want your child reading an inappropriate novel, or watch an adult program, and you don't want them to do either for ever. Every once in a while, you have to shut off the TV, close the book, and go for a romp at the playground.

And that is why Rosie Millard is a moron.

P.S. Dear Rosie Millard, while a video game system such as a Nintendo DS does contain a computer, a computer game usually refers to a video game made for a desktop or laptop personal computer. Handheld and console titles are usually referred to as such, or more commonly as just "video games". In other words, your title makes you look like an ass.