Letting your kids play

[bavinnie]

As long as they weren't wildly underage then I don't think I would assuming I would be able to come up with any "peculiar" questions that may be brought in light of playing the game, after all it is explicit in most ways imaginable, so that is something to consider but you also can't shelter your kids, they will learn about stuff one way or the other, at least if it's in a video game it's a safe enviroment

 

[spectre456]

I think kids can play GTA at a relatively young age as long as they're mature enough to know that everything they see and do has to stay in the game. I started playing when I was 8, and I knew that it was only a form of entertainment and not something I should be doing outside the video game.

If you're worried you could also sit down with the child while he plays and explain how the game works and guide him through everything.

 

[Grimp]

I honestly have no idea how I feel about letting kids play this game. I mean if you play it yourself and go running around in game with an axe murdering people, Its almost hard to see the difference between an adult doing this or a child, its still exists on the same moral playing field. The only thing you would want to worry about is whether your kid will get strange ideas from this and end up going out and doing it in real life. I reckon you can know your kid well enough to make the decision on letting him play the game or not.
I mean, I'm the kind of guy who is disturbed even by in-game violence, so I will often avoid commiting brutal murders, I'm more of a straight up car chase kinda guy, so yeah, maybe your kid wont even want to half of the brutal shit in games anyway

 

[MrGravyCakes]

GTA is a game for people over 18. People should not be letting their children play if they are under that age. If parents wants to be bad parents and let them play regardless of the age rating given to it, then they can and I am sure people do. It is a very very silly thing to do though.

 

[TheViper]

I think they need to understand the difference before you let them play a game like this. Let's just be real here for a second in case it is hard for most. There were literally kids that plotted to kill their best friend because they thought slenderman was real.

You have to understand that kids are just dumber adults. You can't just throw stuff like this at them and expect them to be 100% alright.

 

[Marie Howard]

I would allow him to play but with limitation. I don't want my son to get addiction at his early age.

 

[pwarbi]

I think the general consensus is that if your kid has his head screwed on properly, then they should be ok to play GTA. If they've got any sort of moral compass, then they're not going to be influenced too much by any game.

 

[duckvader]

Play it safe, wait till the kids are older and then they can get the full GTA experience. There's tens of thousands of reasons why people say it shouldn't be done, others say it doesn't matter. I say play it safe and just wait it out.

 

[ACSAPA]

My kid is 17. I think she started playing GTA games when she was 9. She played Dead or Alive 2 when she was 4 years old and is a Dead or Alive and GTA fan. She's a good kid and the games haven't damaged her. I'm a gamer too, so it's always been a mother-daughter activity that we do.

 

[DDB]

I don't have any children, but have come across more than a couple online. Kids that sound like they're 5 or 6 are swearing and laughing about blowing up junk! I find it ridiculous that they let their kids play at such a young age. My cousing used to play GTA IV when he was younger. He brought nerf guns to restaurants and hid under tables with a very negative social capability until he turned 14 and stopped playing. It depends on who you are, but generally I wouldn't let my kids play until they were done developing mentally, so around 15 or 16.

 

[Sheggy6]

I would play only on the account of the supervision, occasionally I would ask a question. I want my children to understand that what they're seeing on the screen is simply imaginative, and should in no way be taken seriously, however that the topics as a whole portrayed are a serious matter.

 

[Obi]

It really depends on the kid. If I had a kid like me then yeah I wouldn't mind what age because I was playing Vice City before I could count to 100 and I'm fine. However I think that making sure the child understands that they can't steal a car, cover it in sticky bombs and drive it into a fairground without consequences larger than a 2 minute police chase is necessary to allow them to play any R rated game.

 

[AmeJouten]

I will let my child play whenever she or he is able to pick up a controller and actually do something within a game. I don't see any problem with a kid playing games as long as you teach them what's real and what isn't and how things apply between a real world, and a video game world.

 

[Devonne]

This is a very good question. My son is 9 and for sure not mature enough to play games like GTA. It has nothing to do with the games, because I love them, but my son doesn't yet see a line between video games and real life and likes to project what he sees and hear towards his friends and it really just gets him in trouble. I'm not sure when he will be ready to play GTA, becuase I'm not going by the ratings I'm going by his own maturity level.

 

[wowtgp]

Although I don't have any kids,I don't let my younger brother play an violent game. There is Wii if he wants to play any game.

 

[JoanMcWench]

What age defines 'kid' exactly? No, my kids don't have time for gaming. They'll have time for gaming when they finish college. My son plays a few games at his friends house but their parents are worse than I am. The only systems he owns have letters & not numbers (NES, SNES, NDS). Which is fantastic because he has no interest in them. When I play it's because I don't sleep & I'm alone & it helps me decompress or focus. Sometimes I feel like Frank Underwood.

 

[iK1NG]

Honestly I'd say 13-14 would be a fair age to allow my child to play GTA. That's on the fairly liberal end of things.

Although I'd love it to be otherwise, by that age, kids these days have likely come in to contact with far worse media, and to disallow something that kids of their age group likely will have access to can cause problems.

Needless to say, one would hope through allowance of such freedoms, the child will simply have no interest in such games.

 

[srofltank]

I think maybe around 10-12 is a decent age to start playing GTA. In the end I don't think age defines the requirement of playing the game--rather maturity. Does your child know about the world enough and is mature enough to understand the concept of GTA is a better question to ask.

 

[biggabeard]

I would like for them to wait until 15-16 but more than likely they would start playing around 12-13. I don't think video game violence is going to taint a child when there is so much real world and movie violence. More than anything I would be playing right next to them and explain the difference between video games and real life.

 

[pedroXsantos]

It depends on whether they had sufficient maturity and real-life perception or not; their age is an important factor as well. Like Obi stated, a child needs to know the repercussions of their acts and the limits to what they can do - they can't get off school and all of a sudden start shooting people with an RPG. In addition to that, my child would have to be at least twelve...