10 Year Old Deemed Fat By Wii Fit
Yet another video game is being bashed for its negative influence on children and potential long term harm. It’s not GTA IV, it’s not Bully, it’s…Wii Fit.
A 10-year old English girl, is one of the few lucky (or so her parents thought) folks to have the chance to play around with Wii Fit, the exercise-based game recently released Nintendo and next to impossible to get a-hold of. The game regularly assesses your Body Mass Index (BMI), taking into account age, height and weight to provide a numeric measure that falls into a body mass category. Apparently the girl was told by the game that she was “fat”. Her stepfather isn’t happy with the label at all, and suggested that it has already negatively impacted his daughter’s self-esteem and self-image. Now, as a girl just about to enter the topsy-turvy world of prepubescent life, being told by strangers, even virtual ones, that you’re overweight could lead to a whole host of self-confidence issues that extend much beyond the immediate impact. I understand the concern.
Nintendo has completely sidestepped calls by the National Obesity Forum and the girl’s parents to do something about the issue by simply stating that:
“Wii Fit is still capable of measuring the BMI for people aged between two and 20 but the resulting figures may not be entirely accurate for younger age groups due to varying levels of development.”
So unless you’re over 20, you’re kind of playing a guessing game with your own results, which is highly amusing considering that most of the advertising for the game depicts whole families, including young children, enjoying the benefits and having a ball doing so. If it’s inaccurate for those age groups, then Wii Fit becomes less of a measuring tool and more of a straight game…a game which frankly would be awfully boring and pointless with no reward system based on performance improvement.
Via | GameSpot
Image courtesy of Nintendo UK
3 opinions for 10 Year Old Deemed Fat By Wii Fit
Nadia
May 19, 2008 at 2:28 am
Well, Wii Fit shouldn’t be using BMI in the first place (my doctor ceased referring to it ages ago) because it’s a pretty inadequate measure for overall health, Still, measuring a 10 year old’s BMI is useless in the first place.
Anyway, I doubt that the game said, “Wow, you’re off the scale, fatty!” Then I could see the cause for being upset. In this case, I doubt the game said anything her doctor wouldn’t.
Nadia
May 19, 2008 at 2:30 am
Oh, and I just noticed (too late!) that the article comes from The Daily Mail. That’s generally a publication (Brits use the word loosely) that’s infamous for targeting games and blaming them for the ills of society.
Erin
May 27, 2008 at 2:41 am
Nadia,
Agree about your comment on BMI. Although it’s still commonly used, it has been criticized for its ability to portray overall health, which we know is a massively complex interaction of factors, based simply of age, height and weight. It’s also, and Nintendo has acknowledged this, highly inaccurate for still developing individuals. It is, however, one of the easiest to calculate, and understandable in that sense that it was included in Wii Fit.
The “fat” comment came from the father of the little girl, and the game doesn’t use the “f-word”. I would guess that it put her into one of the two higher classes, which the family interpreted (perhaps not incorrectly) as being labelled “fat”.
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