The South African government wants to increase the legal drinking age – should we do the same for video games?

MyBroadband recently ran an article about a proposed increase to the legal drinking age.

Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies said that “We are hoping that this debate will involve not just people who have material interest in the industry, but also our communities and people that are involved in dealing with the consequences of alcohol abuse.”

While video game abuse is certainly less of an issue than alcoholism, this brings up an issue we maybe should address – should we have hard minimum age restrictions?

Anyone growing up playing video games no doubt had hard-limits imposed on them by their parents in order to curb playtime.

Whether this was simply a limit each day or only playing on weekends, it’s no secret that if you are anything like us, you would spend all day playing games if you could.

While this is less an obvious issue with teenagers – it may not be the worst idea to stop your impressionable 6 year-olds from spending time in front of the TV every day.

A recent study published in the Annals of Neurology went as far as to say that children between 7-11 years of age shouldn’t play more than 2 hours a week.

At the same time, what would be the effect of lifting the age restriction from 18 to 21 especially with games with extremely mature content (Grand Theft Auto V or The Witcher 3)?

Are you happy with the way video games are gated now? Let us know in the comments below and in our forums.