Playing Outside Causes Bad Behavior in Children

http://jalopnik.com/5350261/worlds-baddest-9+year+old-leads-police-on-80-mph-chase

It took stop sticks to bring a rampaging 9-year-old to a halt on Saturday night after he got mad at his parents and stole their car after they made him quit playing for the evening.

"This young man, I guess, was upset because his mom and dad told him that it was time to come in late last night, around 8 p.m. He was upset because they told him that he had to come in and quit playing, so he was mad and took off," said Greenfield, Indiana Police Major Derek Towle. [via Channel 3000]

Clearly the act of playing outside is what caused this kid to go mad. All of that fresh air must have rotted his brain, the fresh grass caused him to become addicted to the outdoors and he refused to go back inside. Playing outdoors is obviously a dangerously addictive activity and should hereby be banned to protect our children.

…

Isn't that what they should have said about this news? We all know that if it were something like, say, videogames, which the parents told the kid to quit, they would be all over this, raging about how videogames are a negative influence on children. But since there is nothing easy to blame here, it goes largely unnoticed and ignored.

It seems like a bit of a double-standard to me, and believe me, I'm quite experienced in double-standards. People just try to use incidents like this to push their own agendas, but of course, no sane person is against kids playing outside. The simple truth is that most children act out, some more extremely than others. That's their nature, it's a part of the growing process. They can be influenced by things like videogames, television, etc., but that's just because many kids are impressionable and will act out anything they find to be “cool,” regardless of where it originated. Bad behavior is not caused by videogames.