Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood is a national coalition of health care professionals, educators, advocacy groups, parents, and individuals who care about children. They had members vote on the worst toy of 2010 (already?) for children. They voted that the popular Flash gaming portal, AddictingGames.com is the worst toy for children. This seems to be because Nickelodean and all of their affiliate websites links to AddictingGames.com.
I’ve played some of the games on AddictingGames.com and it’s a mixed bag of trash and gold. They don’t seem to discriminate which kinds of games are accessible through their website.
This is a problem, because Nickelodean is a company devoted to entertaining children, and yet AddictingGames.com is in the business of entertaining anyone. By having Nickelodean link to AddictingGames.com, there is no way to ensure that children do not play violent or sexualized and otherwise inappropriate games. There is no way currently to filter out the adult games if the visitor came from a children focused website.
Steve Youngwood, Executive Vice President, Digital, Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group is being targeted (rightfully so) by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood to remove AddictingGames.com from their links page of games for children.
The only issue I had with this, was the original letter they wrote for people to sign and send to Mr. Youngwood, which I have copied below.
OLD
Dear Mr. Youngwood,
I am writing to express my outrage that Nickelodeon links to AddictingGames.com on Neopets.com, Nick.com and NickJr.com. AddictingGames.com features violent and sexualized content that is completely inappropriate for children. I am shocked that Nickelodeon would direct kids to a website where they can play games like Bloody Day, which boasts “back alley butchering has never been so fun,” or play the role of a leering peeping Tom in Perry the Sneak. Linking to games like these from websites for young children is one reason parents have selected AddictingGames.com as the worst toy of the year.
I urge you to immediately remove any and all links to AddictingGames.com from Nick.com, NickJr.com, and any other Nickelodeon websites for children.
End of letter.
The problem I have with it is that it sort of distorts the truth. It implies that AddictingGames.com only has violent and sexualized games, but in fact, it has a wide variety, some of which are fine for children, such as Bloons.
I reworded the letter to say the following, which I think conveys more truth and offers a solution for all parties involved.
NEW
Dear Mr. Youngwood,
I am writing to express my outrage that Nickelodeon links to AddictingGames.com on Neopets.com, Nick.com and NickJr.com. (note: I forgot to edit the “outrage”, because that is too strong a word to represent my view.)
AddictingGames.com features many games, some are fine for children, while others have violent and sexualized content that is completely inappropriate for children. I am surprised that Nickelodeon would direct kids to a website where they can play games like Bloody Day, which boasts “back alley butchering has never been so fun,” or play the role of a leering peeping Tom in Naughty Park. For this reason parents have selected AddictingGames.com as the worst toy of the year.
I urge you to immediately remove any and all links to AddictingGames.com from Nick.com, NickJr.com, and any other Nickelodeon websites for children. Something should be done to ensure that future links from Nickelodean websites only go to gaming websites that have child safe content. Or websites that have a wide range of content only display age appropriate content if the visitor arrives from a Nickelodean website.
Sincerely,
-Reid Kimball
I kind of rushed in that solution towards the end there, but the idea is that if someone is on a Nickelodean website and they click on a link to go to any outside gaming website, like AddictingGames.com, they are directed to a special section of the website that only features games for children.
I realize that there are ways to get around that, any kid could re-type the URL to get full access to AddictingGames.com. Another idea is that parents of children could register a “parental” account that will email them a list of games that are being played, at what times and for how long. This way, they might be able to discover that at 3:30pm, just after school, but while they were at work, their child went to AddictingGames.com and played an inappropriate game.
What do you think? Something ought to be done I think, because there is no ESRB for online games and in years to come, more and more games will be accessible online.
© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.