Games attract stalkers, turn kids into mindless criminals

Don't look now, but another round of the endless cycle of game-panic is upon us. And this time, it's combined, to some extent, with that more recent villain of popular culture: the cyber-stalker. As explained in the breathless tone common on TV news programs, the WiFi networking built into the Nintendo DS can "lure unsuspecting children to dangerous places." According to a report aired by ABC-TV's Action News in Philadelphia, an 11-year-old girl using the DS's Pictochat program was propositioned several times by men asking questions about her age and gender. An "internet safety expert" warns viewers: "Predators are using Nintendo DS anywhere in the world." Action News does point out later in the broadcast that anyone chatting via PictoChat on a DS needs to be within range, and must also be using a DS, making it potentially easier to nab potential stalkers than it is via, say, online chat rooms (though we do have to admit that it is a little creepy, since the stalker is right there with the kid, as opposed to being thousands of miles away). Gamers facing opprobrium can at least take some comfort in the fact that the fear of games is a global phenomenon; a recent report out of Korea warned that games are turning kids into antisocial criminals. An article in the Chosun Ilbo newspaper warns that gamers "can become incapable of discriminating between reality and virtual reality, and thus tend to be more violent and, in the end, more likely to commit crimes."

Read - Stalkers
Read - Korea

[Anton @ Feb 15th 2006 12:10PM]

I may be mistaken, but I didn't know that picto-chat is Wifi enabled. I thought you have to be within 30 feet within another DS's range in order to talk. Doesn't that mean that the men that were stalking the girl were pretty much within 30 feet of her? How do you not notice a grown man with a DS (not that there's anything wrong with that, but you don't see that too much in public)

[neale @ Feb 15th 2006 12:11PM]

que jack t

[PodMonkeys @ Feb 15th 2006 12:17PM]

Parents... I think if parents are doing their jobs correctly, we wouldn't have to worry so much.

Why is liitle 11 year old Tiffany out at that seedy McDonalds, by herself, using Picto Chat? Did her parents warn her not to talk to strangers?

[Svenjamin @ Feb 15th 2006 12:34PM]

Obviously not many Nintendo fanboys at Action News...

[JMac @ Feb 15th 2006 12:53PM]

Your best bet.. just go ahead and tell them you're a 46 year old man who's horny. That should fix any problems with kiddy molestors.

[Piggy @ Feb 15th 2006 12:57PM]

I don't know, video games can be pretty influential. I've been playing Animal Crossing: Wild World for about a month now, and I've become so desensitized to gardening and paying off debts that I fear I may do something like that in the real world, too. I swear, these games are just rotting my mind!

[torontoguy @ Feb 15th 2006 1:00PM]

Games turning kids into mindless killers? Unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy?
Didn't we hear that, 20 years ago, about the Dungeons and Dragons RPG?...and that game didn't even need batteries!
Didn't we hear how 'too much' television was supposed to turn kids into criminals?
And "Rock and Roll" in the 50's (and 'Jazz' before that)...there's a corrupting influence for you!!!
Didn't we hear that about comic books and, decades before that, our great-grandparents worried about how 'penny dreadfuls' were corrupting our grandparents.
The one thing that all of these predictions of doom (not the game..or the movie) have in common is that they are always over the top and, it turns out, ALWAYS wrong.

[Kyle @ Feb 15th 2006 1:05PM]

Didn't you report last week about a Globe and Mail (Canada) article that kids playing video games tend to be better conceptual thinkers, and that if they are bilingual there little brains are unstoppable...oh and video games slow down mental aging...

[Kyle @ Feb 15th 2006 1:07PM]

edit -"their" little brains � d'oh

[rmasterix @ Feb 15th 2006 1:15PM]

although video game play does inhibit growth of impulse control areas of the brain over time, that is different than not being able to discern reality from 'virtual', which i have no idea where they pulled that from.

the best way to think about this stuff is a multidimensional risk factor approach

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16402007&dopt=Citation

[BorderPatrol @ Feb 15th 2006 1:16PM]

Also in the news today, rock n' roll is corrupting our children.

Heck, I hip-thrusted at my relatives last week!

[randomboy @ Feb 15th 2006 1:28PM]

I read this a few hours ago. One word. Disgusted.

Journalism has reached a place where you need not investigate the topic in question. The aim now is to spin news shamelessly in order to attract attention.

[Matt E. @ Feb 15th 2006 1:42PM]

Like most of you reading this, I grew up playing videogames. And there's nothing wrong with me. Well, mostly ;-)

I work as a unix sys admin for my day job, whereby I inflict terror in the hearts of developers and users alike.

Nothing wrong with that, nothing at all.

Anyway, I've learned the difference between reality, scripted reality, and virtual reality. I say that if you can't distinguish between these, there's probably something wrong with you before you started playing videogames.

It's like when I was kid in the 70's and 80's, there were those kids who blamed rock music for their behavior. They claimed if you played certain records backwards, that you could hear masked messages telling you to off your folks or some shit like that. Nevermind that they were completely stoned at the time.

The thing is society has to have a scapegoat to blame for its shortcomings. Every once in while, some politician, with nothing to do, declares war on videogames. That is, until the videogame lobbyist line their pockets and they shut up, for awhile...

[monkeypox @ Feb 15th 2006 1:46PM]

#1 is completely right. there is no nintendo wi-fi pictochat; it's available only within a limited range. "action news" either has no standards or just doesn't care, because they're randomly spouting out "facts" that have no basis.

this is EXACTLY the reason why nintendo created the "friend code": 1. to piss off those of us who just want to a quick game of mario kart with someone, and 2. to keep stupid moms & dads from suing for their own crappy parenting.

[BK @ Feb 15th 2006 2:29PM]

"Mr. Michael Jackson???"

[mpmaley @ Feb 15th 2006 3:24PM]

Hey American parents (yes i'm american) do your damn job if you're going to have kids. Stop being lazy pieces of trash and blaming others on your bad parenting skills.

I've played games, gone on the intnernet since 1994 (8 yrs old) and my parents made sure I turned out fine and my life has been awsome thus far.

[Rocket Punch @ Feb 15th 2006 4:06PM]

Headline: McDonalds Provides Venue For Baby Stalkers

Class action!! anyone wanna joint?

[Jiggabyte @ Feb 15th 2006 4:09PM]

"an 11-year-old girl using the DS's Pictochat program was propositioned several times by men asking questions about her age and gender"

So... she got a bunch of IMs with "Hay, A/S/L??!?!?"

[Frayed77 @ Feb 15th 2006 5:18PM]

Everyday it's a new scapegoat to make up for one thing, parents not doing their jobs. If parents would actually raise their kids, teach them the difference between right and wrong - fantasy and reality - then we wouldn't have to keep rotating between music, movies, tv, and videogames to find a scapegoat for our own shortcomings as a society.

[EatingPie @ Feb 15th 2006 8:29PM]

As noted, the stalker must be within 30 feet. Why has nobody put 2+2 together here?

This was a DANGEROUS situation for the girl, and it's not the parents' -- or the girl's -- fault.

The stalker got lucky with his DS, and could have done something terrible to (such as kidnap) the child. But no, we feel the need to blame everyone from the girl, to her parents, to society at large. (The comment about an adult using a DS being "obvious" was laughable.) Notice one common thing in this thread: No blame for the stalker!

Consider this: The girl WAS raised well... she MUST have told her parents, otherwise the news show would never have heard about it.

Pleaase, think about the larger social implications of gaming. It's there. And denying it and/or ignoring won't change that fact.

-Pie

[The ZeroCorpse @ Feb 15th 2006 9:20PM]

From the article I didn't get that this was a "stalker" on Pictochat. It was another DS owner asking "how old R U? R U a boy or a girl?" and everybody on the girl's end overreacted. It was probably just some other 11-year-old kid with a DS in the mall with them.

Seriously, there's no "protecting a stalker" here. There was no extra danger, as anyone who would mean the kid harm would have been CLOSE ENOUGH TO GRAB HER WITHOUT NEEDING TO USE PICTOCHAT.

This is how I read it:

"Panic!!! Panic!! Someone's talking to our daughter! They must be out to harm her! Even though they didn't say anything bad, or ask anything that would be considered sexual or questionable, they MUST be bad! They're using TECHNOLOGY to talk to her! They're HIDING, aren't they? So they MUST be bad!"

[designerwhite @ Feb 15th 2006 9:42PM]

http://www.tv.com/child-abduction-is-not-funny/episode/178381/summary.html

This is a MUST READ. Right on topic here.

[doug @ Feb 15th 2006 10:29PM]

reality check - the primary purpose of local news shows (and their affiliated web sites) like Philadelphia's 'Action News' is to frighten the viewership. If it bleeds, it leads, dontchaknow.

[ummmm @ Feb 16th 2006 2:17PM]

are they friggen retarded? you can only be 60 feet away, and how the hell is a stalker going to get more info from them. YOU CAN SEE SOMEONE THATS 60 FEET AWAY! this is dumb. and who the hell has their ds on pictochat when their walking? talking to yourself?...

[ScottE @ Feb 16th 2006 6:44PM]

Macdonalds Meal--- 2 dollars

Nintendo DS---150 dollars

Drawing Obscene Pictochat Messages and sending them to 11 year old girls--- Priceless

[Oleg Pryymak @ Feb 17th 2006 3:22PM]

Jesus,it seems that half of Americans are so afraid of technology ,that I imagine them saying "Don't steal my soul with your box" when photographed.
It seems like people think that guns can be better toys then videogames.Guns ain't getting banned,when videogames get practiacally drenched in media controversy

[Gforce @ Feb 20th 2006 12:42PM]

lol, and the funny thing is if there is a wall the distace gets cut back by like 10 feet per wall not including metal objects like lockers or something

[MikeTheCat @ Mar 18th 2006 1:29PM]

Hah, I actually saw that report that night. Funny stuff.

If I remember correctly, they had a DS that some guy had written "ASL."

[Sparky @ Sep 28th 2006 12:52AM]

Grrrrr. If I read one more statement about how video games desensitize people, I'll probably install a BFG 9000 onto a pylon on my F/A 18 and attack a public gathering of some sort or other! If I'm really ticked, I'll grab an enchanted mace or some other striking weapon and throw it through a wall or something, and then I'll follow up with a good old-fashioned chain lightning attack. Yeah.

[Elliott @ Nov 29th 2006 7:12PM]

@ a previous comment (yes I'm lazy)

The only ones who are really truly guilty are the parents for using toys and electronics to replace the time that the should be spending with their children.

Fine example of this:
11 year old girl + Nintendo DS @ McDonald's = Daddy out of town on a "business meeting" (doing it with a prostitute) and mommy in a Valium induced coma at home.