Maybe I've drunk too much of the media Kool-Aid on this one, but
I'm having a little trouble digesting the recent findings of a
sociologist
who claims that there's no truth to the widely-accepted
notion that kids who play violent video games grow up to be violent
people.
Her findings? A study of FBI statistics and
newspaper coverage revealed that youth violence has actually plummeted
while video game play has skyrocketed in the past several years.
She posits that placing the blame on video games exonerates the
environment that a
child lives in that might nurture violence, such as poverty,
instability,
family violence, unemployment, and mental illness. In other
words, there appears to be no direct connection, other than perhaps in
a few widely-known cases, between run-of-the-mill violence and the
playing of violent video games.
So maybe I'm wrong. I still don't like them.
