While highlighting the findings of the Progress In International Reading Literacy Study in yesterday's Sunday Herald, Joanna Blythman perpetuates anxieties that have been with us since the dawn of the post-war consumer age; each generation striving to make the lives of the next more comfortable, yet fretting over what might result from denying their offspring "character building" hardships, bordering on hysteria over the effects of the mass-media on child literacy, behaviour and health. In the fifties it was rock and roll and comic-books that took the wrap; a decade later psychedelia, later still punk; then the eighties rash of "video nasties"; today it's the games console and internet that are cited as the root cause of the happy-slapper, the 21st century juvenile delinquent. As ever, artists prove easier targets than the family (that hallowed institution, the benign veneer of which masks a multitude of sins).

While it is undeniable that English and Welsh children have slid down the literacy league table in question and that this slide coincides with a boom in digital media, drawing a line directly from one to the other (i.e. baldly stating that children read less because of computer games.) is the same kind of flawed reasoning that once led to suggestions that peanut butter caused criminality. Besides, it overlooks the facts that video-games and the internet frequently refer children back to the book shelf (via adaptations of prose), make books more readily available than ever (via Amazon, eBooks et al), offer opportunities to forge friendships over mutual love of fiction (via forums and chatrooms) and that the networking culture growing online depends utterly on the ability to read and write. Simply put, without literacy, the internet dies.

No, children aren't reading for pleasure because they don’t see their parents doing it, perhaps don’t see them at all, and one can assume it’s not Mario Galaxy that’s distracting mum and dad. Positive enforcement at home will do far more than any initiative foisted upon our over-worked and under-paid teachers, and is the only credible riposte to the louder, brasher charms of the games culture. Thank goodness Iain Bell was on hand to remind readers that an examination of our children's state of being can deliver nothing other than a verdict on our record as parents, and that those who are complacent enough to leave their little ones glued to the screen “for more than three hours a day” are just as guilty of neglect as those who’d permit their child unlimited access to the sweetie cupboard, the drinks cabinet or the keys to the tool shed.

I grew up in the eighties, a time when the child-centric censor’s bête noire was animated cartoons based upon brands of merchandise (Masters of the Universe et al). My brothers and I were exposed to hours upon hours of such thinly-disguised blandishments. Yet none of us are obese, illiterate or socially dysfunctional, despite being as fond of pleasure, as partial to the instant gratification of chocolate, toys and Happy Meals, as the next youngster. How did we escape our media-besieged childhood with minds and bodies unharmed?

Simple: our parents spoke to us, and when they did so we heard the word “No” more often than “Yes”. Pester-power is a myth; children will not ask for things, plead for things, scream and kick for things unless past experience shows such behaviours yield results. My brothers and I knew that is was foolish to ask for sweets outside the weekend, for toys at any time other than a birthday or Christmas. Such entreaties had not, would not and never did work. As long as today’s parents maintain their laissez-faire attitude to spending and debt, running themselves ragged spinelessly acquiescing to the whims of their bloated children* they will continue to cite their “time-poor” lives as the cause of their malaise, dumping blame at the feet of those third parties who sought only to educate or entertain but were left to raise their children. What is needed is not a change in the way we present books to the young (whose inherent love of narrative can be cultured, with perseverance, into a fondness for reading), but a revolution in how our society supports and values the time invested in them by their parents. We need to pull our heads out of the sand and rethink maternity and paternity leave, working hours, rates of pay and recreation. The only way to curtail the spread of the coach-potato kid is to help them avoid a future as coach-potato parents, not waste precious time trying to push the exponentially expanding digital genie back into its bottle.

*However, if this article is true, I have to question Nintendo's tactics; why blast the developed world with wall-to-wall advertising for a (relatively) inexpensive product you can only crank out to the tune of "two million a month"? What's the point of fiegning abundance on a product you either can't or won't release in adequate numbers than even come close to meeting demand? Won't the second such year of apparently orchestrated shortages inevitably inculcate a resentment toward Nintendo in general and the Wii in particular? I don't know, may be I'm missing something.