Yet another flaw found in gaming

Feb 5, 2009 16:01 GMT  ·  By

Games are becoming more and more mainstream, but along with said popularity, a lot of people are afraid of the somewhat negative aspects that they might bring. This is due to various anti-video game protesters who claim that these are the most evil forms of entertainment, teaching children that violence is good, but also how to commit crimes.

One of the more recent threats in the eyes of a lot of parents is the fact that their children can befriend on the Internet almost any type of person. This is what happened to a 16-year-old girl from Michigan, who met a Puerto Rican man on Xbox Live who promised that he would help her become a boxer, thus fulfilling her dream.

As she had enough money from her sweet-sixteen party, she subsequently destroyed her own Xbox 360 and PC, in order to remove any tracks, wrote a note in which she said that she wasn't kidnapped and left for Puerto Rico. After a lot of efforts made by the police, she was eventually tracked down and reunited with her family.

But after this, her mother is seemingly accusing the evil influence that the Internet and primarily the Xbox 360 had on her daughter. She was backed up by Perry Aftab, founder and head of WiredSafety, a group dedicated to online security and safety, who declared that “Parents don't realize kids are playing [video games] and communicating. We need to make sure parents are involved with what they're doing and keep and eye out, because the bad guys are.”

The story, which was run by ABC and other media outlets across the United States seems to put the whole blame on the Xbox 360 and the negative aspect that online gaming has on children, but let's not forget that although it may have bad sides, gaming is a great recreational tool and can teach children a lot of things.

Let's just hope that all of these negative pieces of news will disappear and video games will eventually become something natural in our daily lives.