Peter Hitchens (brother of Christopher) writes:

“We now have proof that computer games stop children reading, withering their imaginations and filling their minds with grubby rubbish. Parents have a right and a duty to protect their young from this sort of thing. You wouldn’t give your children neat gin. Why leave them alone at the screen?”

He does not explain what this proof is, although it is trivially true that when someone is playing a computer game he is not reading–unless he is playing a text-based game–but at any rate, what significance that holds, I cannot guess. As to his other complaints; it is true that some games fill the mind with “rubbish”, but others do not. Some games are intelligent and thought-provoking.

Hitchens’ critiques seem to me to apply equally well to television, film, music and theatrical performances. Should children be forbidden from all these as well?