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While early reviews of Grand Theft Auto IV herald it as a masterpiece, some familiar anti-violence advocates are already up in arms.
Florida attorney Jack Thompson has called GTA IV "the gravest assault upon children in this country since polio" and California's state senator Leland Yee recently put out a press release in which he implored parents not to buy the game for their kids.
Are they right? Do violent video games fuel youth violence?
Larry Kutner is the author of five previous books about child psychology; Cheryl K. Olson is a public health researcher and practitioner and was the principal investigator of the first federally funded, large-scale research project in the U.S. to take an in-depth look at the effects of electronic games on preteens and teenagers.
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A pair of Harvard University researchers says no.
Drs. Cheryl Olson and Lawrence Kutner conducted a three-year-long study on the effects of video games on young teenagers and concluded that playing video games is not as bad as it's often suggested.
"If you listen to the politicians and the pundits, the relationship is blindingly clear: playing violent video games leads children to engage in real-world violence or, at the very least, to become more aggressive," write Drs. Olson and Kutner in Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do. "In fact, much of the information in the popular press about the effects of violent video games is wrong."
Drs. Kutner and Olson, co-directors of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media and co-authors of Grand Theft Childhood were online for an hour.
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Michael Snider, Globetechnology.com: Hello Drs. Kutner and Olson, thanks very much for joining us today. I've spent a little time reading press reviews of your book -- gaming publications seems quite content with your findings, but I'm wondering how it has been received in the mainstream media and by critics of violent games. I see today that MADD has come out against GTA IV-- any chance they can be convinced kids aren't going to jump into their cars wasted just because that's part of the game?
Dr. Lawrence Kutner: It's been interesting to see how different groups and publications sometimes cherry-pick our findings to match their beliefs. Our findings are nuanced. What's clear, however, is that the melodramatic claims by some pundits and politicians about violent video games turning typical children and teenagers into violent or antisocial people in the real world simply don't hold water.
We need to get beyond those simplistic statements.
Dr. Cheryl Olson: We have not played GTA IV ourselves because we don't have a PS3 or Xbox 360. But from what we've read, the game punishes you for driving drunk and rewards you for being smart enough to call a cab.
Daniel K from North Bay writes: I was never allowed to play video games like GTA when I was a kid. Now at 23 I love the game. I believe that violent games play only part of the role in making violent children. The home environment plays a large role too. Children need to know what is real and what is not, and parents need to play a large role in their value formation. If children receive a healthy up bringing and a strong core of values, then by the time they are in their early teens, they should be mature enough to know that the game is solely for entertainment. Isn't that just common sense?
Dr. Lawrence Kutner: Daniel, you make a lot of sense. One of the issues with GTA is that much of the content is satire, which is something that young teenagers have difficulty picking up, especially if they don't have the pop culture references.
Our research found that the 7th and 8th graders we surveyed were acutely aware of the difference between fantasy and reality, and acted accordingly.
Ian McDonald from Toronto writes: It seems to me the politicians and everybody else just want an easy scapegoat. It's a lot easier to blame everything on video games, movies, TV etc. than to actually find and treat the root cause. People who spend their time watching musicals don't go around singing everywhere. Why do they think there is a link between what they think is bad when they don't see a link in what they think is good?
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