In this report

Reports:

Tips for parents

Here are some tips for monitoring your kids’ usage:

Encourage or enforce reasonable hours. One Consumer member says they give their kids an hour to play at a time.
Use games as a reward for homework or good behaviour – likewise, take the games away if anything bad happens. Another member says if her boys do anything bad, they are “punished with being banned from playing on the Xbox…We haven’t had an incident from them in months!”
Read up on a game’s content by doing an internet search for reviews. Wikipedia can be useful here.
Turn gaming into a family activity – keep the games in the lounge and buy titles that involve several people (see “Family games”). Get involved in what your children are playing – don’t treat the games as a babysitter!