Despite its groundbreaking (for 2013) design as a living, breathing world, Grand Theft Auto 5's Los Santos is missing one big - or, rather, small - part of everyday human life: children. Pedestrians roam GTA 5's Los Santos' streets, but all of them are adults, making for a jarring distinction between Grand Theft Auto 5 and the real world. Rockstar's reasons for not including kids seem self-evident, but fans have come up with a few in-universe explanations for why there are no kids in GTA 5.
The Grand Theft Auto series is notorious for its edgy content, concerning parents everywhere with its violence, drug use, and sexual themes. But the fact that it's not meant for kids to play doesn't mean there shouldn't be kids in its worlds. GTA's cities are, after all, recreations of real-life cities. It's not like New York is adult-only, so it's odd to see places like GTA 4's Liberty City devoid of people younger than 18 or 20.
Still, it makes total sense for Rockstar to not include children. GTA's game design emphasizes freedom, including the freedom to commit violence against anyone walking around in the open. If players were able to subject children to that same violence, GTA would be even more controversial than it already is. Of course, Rockstar could just follow Skyrim's lead and make children invincible, but that would have its own immersion-breaking issues, like awkwardly coming to a halt when ramming a car into an indestructible child. It's probably easier to ignore the fact that GTA has no children than it would be to write off invulnerable ones, simply because players will never see them in the first place. That hasn't stopped some players from noticing, however, and coming up with a few theories.
Why Fans Think Grand Theft Auto 5's World Has No Children
With the obvious, practical explanation out of the way, fans dug deeper to devise in-universe explanations for the lack of children in GTA. Reddit user GayBoyAdvance, for example, had one idea that's in-line with the maturity of the games themselves. Because life in GTA's cities is so full of danger like carjackings, murders, robberies, gunfights, gang wars, and police chases (usually involving the player), the Reddit user theorized GTA NPCs with children all decided to move to the safer suburban areas. This would explain why there's children in Bully's suburban town of Bullworth, which is known to exist in GTA's universe, but not in Los Santos.
GayBoyAdvance shared an alternative theory, as well, saying maybe GTA's world is in economic decline. As a result, people struggle to afford feeding extra children, especially in more expensive city environments. This also explains, as they point out, the relatively low number of students in Bully's Bullworth Academy, which only hosts 65 students compared to real-life boarding schools' hundreds.
A final theory comes from Reddit user GreggoryBasore, who suggested GTA 5 could take place in a version of hell. Since children would be too innocent upon death to be sent to hell, only adults are found there. This could also be the reason GTA's world is so violent and corrupt, as all the adults there were "bad" enough in life to be sent to the underworld.
Grand Theft Auto 5 released on September 17, 2013, for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, on November 18, 2014, for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, on and April 14, 2015, for PC.
Source: GayBoyAdvance/Reddit