Kids & The Internet

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Personally, I started playing PC games when I was 3. I always watched when my father played Commander Keen or some old timey shooter and at some point I just naturally wanted to try it too. However I had a lot of other activities to balance it out. I lived in a very small town, so there was always a lot of nature to play in and most of the time I preferred running around in the sunshine with my friends. Only when it was raining would we stay inside and play games instead.

My parents were actually very reasonable when it came to stuff like games and internet. They knew that forbidding me to use those would just make it all the more interesting to me... So when they thought that for example some game wasn't suitable for my age, they wouldn't just forbid me to play it, but they would talk to me about it, ask me why I wanted to play it so badly and explain why they thought that I shouldn't.
That's why I was allowed to play GTA 2 when I was maybe 8 or so - I loved the game because you could drive around in cars and explore the city and I didn't really care about the fact that you could shoot people etc. So we sat together, had a look at that game and they found that since my motivation wasn't being brutal, but just having fun, it was okay for me to play it. And I can't say that it has harmed me in any way.