US senator and Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has told American parents that they need to curb the amount of time their kids spend playing video games.
Obama, 46, told a packed Wilkes Hall in Pennsylvania, US to turn off the television, turn off the video games”, adding that "Government can’t do everything".
According to Pennsylvania’s Patriot News, Obama is backing a radical new policy, which would see parents identified as ‘at-risk’ at the hospital when they deliver a baby – and would then be taught to read and encouraged to push their child through a good education.
It’s not the first time Obama has attacked US kids’ overexposure to video games. Back in February he told a Wisconsin crowd:
We’re going to have to parent better, and turn off the television set, and put the video games away, and instil a sense of excellence in our children, and that’s going to take some time.”
Indeed, Gamepolitics quotes Obama criticising parents for over-exposing their kids to games from as far back as April, 2006.