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Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) Rating System Effective?

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“Nearly All Children Spend Time Playing Video Games": The Entertainment Software Rating Board
To what extent is the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) rating system effective?

Loren Alexis Wilson
Edgewood High School
Candidate Number: 003947-0079
Word Count: 3,581 Abstract
Video games are blamed for many of the tragedies that occur in society. Some people argue that the evolution of video game technology is associated with teenage violence. In an effort to better understand the protections afforded families, I conducted research to better understand the safeguards relative to video game users. In my research, I found that the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), created in an effort to help parents …show more content…

The Rating Summaries include full descriptions and can be extremely helpful to parents who want to closely monitor their children’s video game activities.
Rating Categories
Like the Surgeon General’s warning, the ESRB includes a Rating Category on the front of each packaged video game. Rating Categories suggest age appropriateness of a videogame based on their content and include; Early Childhood (EC), Everyone (E), Everyone +10 (E+10), Teen (T), Mature (M), and Adults Only (AO). Although it is not considered a Rating Category, Rating Pending is the rating administered to video games that have not yet been assigned a final ESRB rating. However, Rating Pending should be replaced with an actual rating once one is assigned.
Despite its rarity, the Early Childhood (EC) rating is assigned to video games with content suitable for children ages 3 and up. Early Childhood games do not contain any material a parent would find inappropriate. A prime example of this would be Sesame Street: Elmo's A-to-Zoo Adventure available on Nintendo Wii. The Sesame Street game teaches letters and numbers through interaction with Elmo and Zoe at the Sesame Street …show more content…

Hart Research Associates, 88% of parents believe the ESRB rating system is either "very helpful" or "somewhat helpful". According to a survey conducted by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, parents said that among all entertainment rating systems (TV, movies, music and games); the ESRB ratings are the most useful, with 91% finding them "very useful" (58%) to "somewhat useful" (33%).
“Parents and physicians should recognize that popular M-rated video games contain a wide range of content and may expose children and adolescents to messages that may negatively influence their perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors.”
According to the ESRB president Patricia Vance, the ESRB is partnering up with the PTA to help provide parents with valuable guidance and resources about computer and video games, and is among the most extensive in terms of ground level support for communities nationwide. I find with the steps that ESRB provides, they are as efficient as possible to protect users of video games given the many variables that absolutely cannot be controlled by a

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