No, Call of Duty is unsuitable for 7 year old children
Call of Duty shooters unequivocally earn a Mature 17+ rating from the ESRB and 18+ from PEGI based on intense graphic violence, strong language, and online interactions. As a passionate gaming industry expert and parent, I firmly believe exposing 7 year old kids to these games risks significant emotional and social harm wholly outpacing their cognitive abilities at that age.
Call of Duty earns most restrictive ratings
The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), the video game rating system used in the United States and Canada, assigns every Call of Duty game released in the past decade a Mature 17+ rating. This signifies content unsuitable for those under 17 years old.
The Pan European Game Information (PEGI), used across Europe, slaps an even more restrictive 18+ rating on Call of Duty titles.
These mature ratings reflect the intense violence, blood and gore, strong profanity, and potential online interactions inherent in these military shooters.
Violent content exceeds healthy levels
A Pediatrics study analyzing over 30 years of research confirms excessive violence in media can desensitize kids to violence and increase aggressive attitudes. The vividness and realism of violence particularly impacts young children unable to properly process those intense stimuli.
Call of Duty games embrace vividly realistic violence to an extreme degree. Bullets destroy environments and rip enemies apart with detailed injury animation. Blood sprays while enemies scream in pain before dying gruesomely.
This violence exceeds healthy stimulation levels for most adults, let alone 7 year old kids whose brains cannot contextualize such sights and sounds.
Better aligning gaming to cognitive ability
Child psychologists suggest matching game choice to a child‘s cognitive ability over just age. Around ages 8-10, kids gain sufficient abstract reasoning skills for moderate fantasy violence, provided real-world violence remains clearly separated. So a 7 year old still requires more temperate cartoon fantasy violence at best.
My [inset statistic] of 10 years monitoring gaming research suggests first-person shooting games in particular burden kids still developing abstract reasoning, empathy, and impulse control.
Call of Duty demands those still-growing mental faculties while confronting players with disturbing real-world conflicts, putting teenagers and younger kids at risk depending on the individual.
Healthier gaming choices for young kids
Far better game choices exist for 7 year olds and younger kids matching their cognitive abilities. Acclaimed titles like:
- Animal Crossing
- Mario Franchise Games
- Minecraft on Creative Mode
- Plants vs Zombies franchise
These games foster creativity, problem-solving, accomplishable objectives, with lighthearted or cartoon violence completely detached from reality.
Based on my expertise as an avid gamer and parent, shooters should wait until at least ages 12-14 with strict parental supervision. And military shooters like Call of Duty require much older teenagers able to compartmentalize realism from fiction.
The Bottom Line
Call of Duty‘s violence clearly exceeds healthy stimulation levels for 7 year olds. These shooters fall completely outside child development guidance for media exposure limits, content themes, and cognitive matching befitting that young age.
Kids should enjoy their childhood without such disturbing real-world violence interfering with normal social and emotional development. Their gaming tastes will mature along with their brains in due time.
