Grand Theft Childhood: Who's Stealing What from Whom?

In the first chapter of Grand Theft Childhood, authors Dr. Lawrence Kutner and Dr. Cheryl Olson make the remarkably common-sense observation that:

"...the 'big fears' bandied about in the press -- that violent video games make children significantly more violent in the real world; that children will engage in the illegal, immoral, sexist and violent acts they see in some of these games -- are not supported by the current research, at least in such a simplistic form. That should make sense to anyone who thinks about it. After all, millions of children and adults play these games, yet the world has not been reduced to chaos and anarchy."

Tom Hanson, in his excellent Open Education blog, has been following issues surrounding "Shoot 'em Up Video Games" for a while. In his most recent post, he interviews Dr. Kutner about some of the public reactions Grand Theft Childhood has generated. I was particularly struck by Dr. Kutner's response to Susan Estrich's review of the most recent release of Grand Theft Auto IV:

She also engages in hyperbole in her attacks, stating that kids 'spend more time with [video games] than with real life.' Think about that for a second. It’s a dramatic statement, but is it true? Our study found that only 13 percent of boys and 2 percent of girls spent 15 or more hours per week playing video games. Assuming 8 hours/night for sleep, a child would have to spend more than 56 hours per week playing video games to meet her criterion. We’ve only seen that among an extremely small group of gamers not in our study whose serious emotional problems were manifest in other ways—it’s certainly not the norm!"

Such careful research and open minds marks them as true Defenders of the Playful. We are fortunate in having people like Drs. Olsen, Kutner, and Hanson to help us gain a mature perspective over mature games, and regain our trust in play, and in our kids.


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith