Home Office report on ‘Sexualization of Young People’ released

By Stephany Nunneley

Remember last week when Big Brother’s Dr Linda Papadopoulos announced that she was set to release a report on children being sexualized in the media and videogames?

It’s been released.

The report contains quite a few bits related to games.

Here’s a smidgen, courtesy of GoNintendo:

• Many popular video games effectively reward children for engaging in violent, illegal activity, albeit virtually…

• Nevertheless, it is imperative that we acknowledge the very real possibility that, say, pornography that shows girls talking with relish about pre-teen sexual exploits, or highly realistic video games where players take on the role of stalker and rapist might start to blur the boundaries between what is acceptable and what is not.

• Games consoles are sold with a separate ‘unlocking’ code, which purchasers can choose to input if they wish to use or allow access of the console to adult and online content.

That last bit there must be a dig at The Saboteur – at least that is one that comes to mind at the moment.

Another couple of bits culled from it:

• A significant number of men exposed to video games featuring hyper-sexualised characters made judgments that suggested greater tolerance of sexual harassment; in the longer-term, exposure correlated with tolerance of sexual harassment and greater acceptance of the ‘rape myth’.

• Most responsible parents would not allow their young children to watch an 18-rated film, yet many take a different attitude when it comes to 18-rated games, which are equally inappropriate in their content and style for a young audience. The latest gaming consoles also provide young people with access to the internet, and parents are often neither aware of this increased access nor know how to censor the information that children receive.

The full thing can be read in PDF form here, via the Home Office UK.

All 102 pages of it – not counting the covers.