Grand Theft Childhood: the surprising truth about violent video games and what parents can do is a book exploring the ‘common sense’ or face validity behind the perceived link between video game violence and real life violence. What they find is there is no evidence of a link. Violent kids did not play more violent games, and playing violent games does not make one more desensitized to violence. And efforts to mediate or limit violent games take time, attention, and money away from other factors that have been proven to correlate with more violence. The book is by Lawrence Kutner, PhD and Cheryl Olson, ScD, cofounders and directors of the Center for Mental Health and Media at the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Here is the amazon listing:
and some conflicting recent research that suggests that teenagers who play violent video games over a number of years become more aggressive towards other people as a result:
