[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

If you look at the violent crime in the US over the past 20 years among teenagers it's gone down, and gone down significantly, and if you look at videogame play, it's gone up," said Dr Lawrence Kutner and Dr Cheryl Olsen of Harvard Medical School in a recent interview.

Apparently he never read that correlation does not equal causation.

I think the reduction in violent crime over the last 20 years has more to do with the fact that the "crack wars" that ravaged our cities during the late 1980s/early 1990s ended.

[Flash Bazbeaux]

Then you think wrong. Apparently you missed this study:

BOYS who don’t smoke crack at all are at greater risk of getting into trouble than those who smoke crack occasionally, according to two Yale psychologists.

[Bastiat_Fan]

I agree correlation does not equal causation, but if video games actually CAUSED violence, given the explosion of popularity in gaming over the last 20 years, wouldn’t violence pretty much HAVE to go up?

I grew up with video games (21), I don’t have a single memory where a console was not in the house, as my older brothers bought their first Nintendo when I was 3 or 4. Every single person my age that I know plays video games at least on occasion, be they playing college athletics, in the military, in college, or just fat slobs. EVERYONE plays them, either on consoles owned by friends, or on their own consoles. My Marine recruiters play them, my old roommate (a firefighter) plays them. GTA 4 made more in gross sales (400 MILLION) in its first week than any movie will likely make all year. With all this, why are we not living in a country where violence is up 100, 200, or 300%?

This is no different than the comic book fear-mongering of the 1950s. It’s just plain STUPID. I’m just glad that the video game industry is powerful enough to stop these nanny-staters from ruining video games like they ruined comic books 60 years ago.