by Ryan Henson

Created on: March 18, 2009

With the birth of every new cultural phenomenon, there will be someone there to herald it as a horseman of the Apocalypse. It happened with rap music, rock music, even The Jerry Springer Show. There has been similar chicken little-type outcry over the past decade concerning the proliferation of realistic and violent video games, claiming that we're training a generation of desensitized mass-murderers and video game addicts. These reactions might be a bit over-dramatic, but that doesn't mean that excessive video game play can't be bad for teens. In fact, with video games becoming so inseparable from daily life in our world today, it would border on neglectful not to look into the possible long-term effects on kids.

Violence

The most common arguments against video games are that they lead to violence. These arguments rose to a high water mark after the Columbine high school shootings, in which two students allegedly designed a real-life killing spree based on the "Doom" series of ultra-violent video games. As game technology improves and games approach an uncanny level of visual realism, concern has grown about whether game consoles are becoming virtual murder simulators. Some studies have shown a connection between violent games and aggression, but there has been no solid proof that this leads to actual violent crime.

According to a recent large-scale study, detailed in the book Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth about Video Games( by Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson), parents might not need to worry too much about violent games turning their kids into killers, but these games can lead to more moderate aggressive behavior. The study examined the video game habits and social activity of 1,200 middle school children over a two year span. Overall, the study found that a normal amount of video gaming can be healthy, and that most kids are able to separate the scenarios they see in video games from reality. However, they did find that kids, both boys and girls, who played M-rated video games were more likely to have participated in delinquent behavior during the previous year, such as physical fights or property damage, than kids who didn't play M-rated games.

"We can't say whether games like Grand Theft Auto encourage aggression, whether aggressive kids like GTA, or if other factors affect both of these," Says Olson. "But parents should definitely keep a closer eye on children who play mostly violent games, or play for many hours per week."

For normal, well-adjusted

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