Appeal for gaming Ratings

Dr Panpimol Lohtrakul, director of the Rajanukul Institute's Department of Mental Health, said the Public Health Ministry had sent its proposal to the Ministry of Culture's National Culture Commission in a bid to prevent young players from imitating games and committing acts of violence.

According to the proposal, gameratings should be divided into four categories: development and educational games for 0 to threeyearolds; entertainment games for three to sixyearolds; games that engage the mind and encourage learning for 13 to 15yearolds; and free access for kids older than 18.

She said at present only a few games were rated and none gave enough information about the content, such as the extent of violence, how bloody the game is, the sexual content and the usage of rude language.

Panpimol expects the rating system to help parents control the kind of games their children play.

However, she said there were 80,000 gaming shops nationwide, but only 23,990 had licences. Panpimol said kids as young as three were spending more than three hours at gaming shops.

She said she was also planning to ask the National Culture Commission to issue a regulation that gaming shops do not let children sit at the computer playing for more than two hours a day and that they be only allowed games that are beneficial.

Meanwhile, Office of Basic Education Commission's secretarygeneral, Kasama Worawan na Ayutthaya, said she had called on the deputy directors of 20 schools and a network of parents to discuss the problem of game addiction. She said she was told that the problem existed nationwide because gaming shops were located close to schools, giving children easy access.

Chaiya Kanyapan, deputy director of TeepangkornVittayapat School under the patronage of His Royal Highness Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, said the number of game shops around the school had been continuously increasing over the past four months and that none displayed any licences.

Moreover, he said, parents had complained about how their kids could not be pulled away from the games, and some had even asked for help from school staff members.

In order to resolve this problem, Kasama has called on schools across the country to collect information about students to forward to Minister of Education Somchai Wongsawas.

"We will encourage all schools to look into each student's background and research the reasons for their game addiction, which would give us enough material to find ways of improving the curriculum," she said.