Control Freaks : Kids are spending untold hours playing video games. Is this harmless or dangerous?

It’s a scary sight.

With glazed eyes and a menacing grimace, your 5-year-old son is transfixed in front of a television screen watching a karate-chopping, chain-whipping, blood-spurting orgy of video violence.

Not only is the child controlling this blood bath with his own hands, but you have to literally pry his fingers off the joystick to get him to stop playing.

Welcome to the world of video games and the debate over whether these technological fantasies are good or bad for our kids. Parents, educators and psychologists are split over whether the games offer a healthy mental challenge to children or are simply a bad influence.

With millions of kids owning one or more video game systems in their home, this entertainment phenomenon nearly surpasses television as one of kids’ top pastimes.

Nintendo of America Inc., the top producer of video game systems, boasts that its Game Boys, game systems or Super Nintendos are in one out of every three homes in the United States.

Children spend untold numbers of hours furiously punching buttons on the video remote, controlling the destinies of characters that range from benign hedgehogs, baseball players and Mickey Mouses to brutal mercenaries and scantily clad temptresses.

For some parents and experts, the games are a nightmare. They complain that many of the popular games are too violent and their kids become so obsessed with playing that their family life, schoolwork and social relationships suffer.

On the other side are those who argue that the games provide safe challenging contests of skill that help improve children’s computer knowledge and hand-eye coordination, and give them a sense of control and achievement.

Even some hospital pediatric wards are using the games as therapeutic entertainment for hospitalized children.

In response to concerns over violence in the games, industry officials have imposed new strict standards prohibiting games that display gratuitous and excessive violence, sexual and racial stereotyping or profanity.

Despite some anecdotal evidence that children may act aggressively after playing the games or become too obsessed with playing, there appears to be no scientific proof that video games have a negative long-term effect on children.

Though Santa Ana psychologist Stanley Walters disdains the violence in the games, he and others agree with those in the video game industry who say that the games sometimes allow children and adults to safely vent their aggression.

Children have always needed to work out their aggression, Walters says. “Years ago, kids could get angry, go out and shoot a buffalo and feel better.”

Now, they can play “Street Fighter II” and no one really gets hurt, says Nintendo spokeswoman Perrin Kaplan.

“It’s certainly better than one kid hitting another kid or kicking their mother,” she adds.

The violence “doesn’t bother me. It’s just fake. It doesn’t even look real,” says 12-year-old David Rice of Irvine. His father, David Rice Sr., a family therapist at the South Coast Psychological Center in Irvine, often plays the games with his son.

“My parents don’t like the violence,” says Jason Meier, 12, of Westminster, as he and his brother Eric, 10, played a game of Street Fighter II at a video arcade at the Westminster Mall. “They say, ‘How did anyone make up such a game?’ ”

If the games are played in moderation and parents help choose appropriate games for their children, as well as play them with their kids, family relationships can actually be enhanced, Rice says.

He suggests parents steer away from allowing their children to play the more violent games and that limitations be set on how long children can play.

In fact, he and other child development experts suggest that game playing can be used as a reward for doing well in school or for good behavior.

“I think parents today would be relieved their kids were spending time playing video games. It’s certainly benign compared to what they could be doing--like becoming involved with drugs or alcohol,” said Shelomo Osman, a clinical social worker with a family counseling practice in Lake Forest.

Based on his experience counseling families, Osman says that “the majority of kids don’t become video fanatics. It’s a benign phenomenon.”

But like too much television for children, video games can spell “disaster for their sense of creativity and imagination,” contends Walters, who has counseled children and families for 40 years.

“Video games are even worse (for children) than TV,” asserts Albert H. Jones, owner and director of Carden Hall in Newport Beach, a private school. “Their eyes become glazed. They become automatons when they play the games.”

“Television and the telephone have always been the two big bugaboos” interfering with kids’ schoolwork, said Jones, who has been an educator for more than 30 years. “Now there’s a third bugaboo--video games.”

UCLA professor Patricia Marks Greenfield, like Rice, is among those who see value in the games.

She dismisses claims that the games are addictive or that they are harmful for children. In fact, she concluded in her book “Mind and Media” (Harvard University Press, 1984) that “video games, in terms of time spent (playing them), are much less addictive than television.”

Rice suggests that if parents have problems tearing their children away from the video screen, they make a deal that for an hour of video game play, the child must then engage in an hour of outdoor play with friends.

If children are playing the games excessively, to the point where other relationships and activities are suffering, “it often is a symptom that something is missing in the family or there is a problem at home,” Rice said.

For example, “if the family life is very stressful...a kid may turn to video games” to escape, Rice said.

Greenfield, a professor of psychology, disputes claims that the games are useless activities for children.

“It seems that far from being lazy or seeking mindless games, children look for games that challenge them,” she observed from her research.

Greenfield concludes that the games can help children improve learning skills such as hand-eye coordination, the ability to integrate different spatial perspectives, as in games with mazes. They can also teach children how to react quickly and enhance memory skills.

Many children, including those interviewed by Greenfield during her research, said they enjoyed playing video games more than watching television because of their ability to control and interact with the games.

“In TV, if you want to make someone die, you can’t,” one 9-year-old girl told Greenfield.

“Playing video games is more exciting because you feel like you are really in control,” said the younger Rice.

“Video games are the fusion of media,” said Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr., professor of education at the University of Miami and author of “Video Kids” (Harvard University Press, 1991). “They are the potential to enter the passive medium of television and film and realize the promise of controlling and acting within the world of RoboCop, Batman, Mike Tyson and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

“We had a Nintendo set, but it’s been banned to the closet,” said Pamela Burden of Costa Mesa. Burden said she put it away because she was concerned the games could become addictive and that her sons, ages 10 and 14, wanted to play all the time.

Burden was also disturbed by her sons’ aggressive behavior after they played the games. “They weren’t nice to be around and they weren’t nice to each other,” said Burden. Despite her ban on the games, she said “they still beg for them.”

Orange County parent Carol Merritt said she’s never had to regulate her daughters’ video game playing because they don’t play it excessively. Melissa, 10, and Stephanie, 13, are involved in so many extracurricular activities that they don’t have much time to play, said the Tustin mother.

“The most they ever play is for an hour or two. And they’ve never bought violent games. In their games, no one is being beheaded,” she said.

Educators Christina Abasolo and Toni Fabela said they advise parents to strictly limit the amount of time their children spend playing the games and monitor the kinds of games they do play.

Abasolo, director of the Christian Montessori school in Costa Mesa, said she tells parents, “Play with your children. Don’t just use (video games) as a baby-sitter.”

Fabela, a preschool teacher at Kid Works Center in Long Beach, said she advises parents to allow their children to play the games as a special treat or reward.

“When I hear that some children spend three or four hours a day in front of video games, I don’t think that is healthy at all.”

“Lots of parents think (video games) are OK because it’s an easy baby-sitter,” Burden said.

Letting children endlessly play the games may keep them out of their parents’ hair, but it may spell trouble for the kids, warns Santa Ana psychologist Walters. “It ruins their creativity factor and takes time away from them playing outside or socializing with other kids.”

“I tell parents all the time, if they want to have healthy children, get rid of the TV,” Walters said.

Rice, however, argues that if played in moderation and with other children, the games can actually assist some youngsters in socializing.

And when parents join in the game, it can be a perfect way for the family to have fun together, he said. “When I play with my son, we play sports games and it’s very good for him. Some of the new interactive games, like chess, are also good.”

Margaret Ferrin, an educational psychologist in Huntington Beach, says if parents have problems over video playing in the home, it is probably because they haven’t had the courage to say “no” to their kids.

“It’s so easy to let their children get glued to the Nintendo game and then when they can’t unglue them, they blame it on Nintendo,” she said. “But they created the problem themselves.”