Daily Mail: Games are hurting kids

We’re sorry. Repeating the same story –

nay, the same sensational headline

– two years in a row just to secure attention from readers is a dirty journalistic trick.

You wouldn’t catch an august, dignified national newspaper like The Daily Mail relying on this sort of unethical subterfuge to up its readership, for instance.

Just look at its article on, ‘The Xbox generation: Why children are now more likely to be hurt falling out of bed than from a tree’.

In this ‘brand new’ reportage, it, erm, sensibly bemoans the fact that fewer little oiks are injuring themselves tumbling from Great Oaks than they were back in the days when Just William was the naughtiest entertainment available.

And what, I hear you cry, is keeping the nation’s youth from smashing head first into next-door’s crazy paving? Bloody games! Perish the thought!

Indeed, as a spokesperson for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents says: "We have asked ourselves whether it’s better to break a wrist falling from a tree than developing Repetitive Strain Injury from playing computer games."

So there you have it. Kids should be snapping their carpal bones from a great height. Anything else simply isn’t healthy.

From a journalistic standpoint, it’s nice to see that this Mail article is in NO WAY reminiscent of the story MCV reported on this time last year, which offered a headline of: ‘PlayStation generation that will never climb a tree.’

Last year, PlayStation generation. This year, Xbox generation.

Microsoft will be pleased.