Here’s what you asked:
Should one feel embarrased about watching TV? reading fiction? playing board games?
The answer is that there is a difference between watching t.v. and playing video games and reading books and playing board games. Yes. Do you think this kid is more likely to have been reading Harry Potter and playing board games with his friends for free time, or playing Grand Theft Auto and watching t.v.?
Boy, 7, Says He Stole SUV To Do “Hood Rat Stuff” (Palm Beach Gardens, FL)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2009175/posts
If you think playing video games is a good way to spend your time, that’s your personal decision. But let’s not pretend that it is on par with reading a book or even playing a board game with other people.
Somehow I don’t think GTA was much of an influence on him beyond maybe his ultimate choice of terminology & crimes. Most likely he was well on his way to being a hoodlum anyway, and unlikely to have been saved by Harry Potter and Parchisi.
Wanton thuggery has been a popular path for teens for the whole of human existence. There has always been some kind of objectionable content, transferred by some medium, which such delinquents marginally molded their delinquencies to.
You did avoid my last question, rhetorically worded to answer your premise “let’s not pretend that it is on par with reading a book or even playing a board game with other people”. There are plenty of trashy/horrific books which have inspired thuggery; literature has a long history of censorship for such works for the exact same reasons you give for dissing video games. There are even plenty of board games (D&D in particular) broadly attributed to children acting out horrors.
Not all books are Jane Austin.
Not all games are Monopoly.
And not all video games are less worthy of one’s time than, broadly speaking, reading or board games.