September 17, 2000

Kids Watch the Darnedest Things

By JAYSON BLAIR

KIDS are growing up faster. Sort of.

The Federal Trade Commission released a report last week that scolded the film, recording and video game industries for marketing violent, adult-rated entertainment to young consumers.

The F.T.C.'s concerns are supported by a research report called "Video Games and Aggressive Thoughts, Feelings and Behaviors," published this year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. It found that 80 percent of Sega and Nintendo video games are violent. This marks a shift from the 1980's, when Pac- Man was considered one of the more violent titles.

But while research shows that young people are increasingly looking for more mature entertainment, they are not just looking for violence.

For example, ratings from Nielsen Media Research show that young people are more interested in shows like ABC's "Sabrina: The Teenage Witch" and FOX's "Malcolm in the Middle" than they are in UPN's wresting program, "WWF Smackdown."

Teenagers and children are also increasingly watching programming that was once considered the domain of adults. But those shows, according to Nielsen, are likely to include sit-coms like NBC's "Frasier" and ABC's "Spin City," as well as relatively serious dramas like NBC's "E.R." Each of those programs rank within the Top 50 for young viewers, according to Nielsen's data.

Even on the blood-spattered turf of video games, the best sellers remain programs like Frogger (where players help a frog cross a busy road), which are more popular than gory shoot-'em-ups like Doom and Unreal Tournament.

According to the Journal of Personality and Social Psycology report, written by Craig A. Anderson, a psychology professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, the cutesy Super Mario Brothers, followed by the benign Tetris, were the most popular video games among 207 secondary school to college age students surveyed. Moreover, violent Games like Mortal Kombat were most likely to be played by college students.

The F.C.C. report "focused on the marketing of R-rated material, so in fairness to the F.T.C., their task was not to look at other entertainment there is," said John Dreyer, a senior vice president for corporate communications at the Walt Disney Company.

"I don't know if the point is lost, but I think there is a great deal of evidence for the argument that there is plenty for the family audience and they all do very well."

Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company