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In these first years of the twenty-first century, we can definitely state that computer-games became one of the unavoidable elements of modern life of the young people. They are not overly expensive, ever-present and easily accessible, so it is no wonder that the computer entertainment industry makes more money ($8 billion) in a year than Hollywood.
Research shows that as much as 92% of children between 4 and 17 years of age play video games. This is a huge percentage and one cannot deny the amount of influence this form of entertainment has on forming their personalities. Children this age tend to absorb and imitate all they see, and this makes computer-games and TV highly important factors in growing-up.
Neither TV nor computer-games were able to stand up to the global increase of violence in the world in the last two decades. This is why parents are being more and more concerned for the mental health of their children. The question is whether computer games can affect children's physical and mental health. The results were always too vague to bring us to a definite conclusion. So, there is no scientific proof that video-games are harmful, but…
One of the most common medical problems connected typically to playing video games is crooked posture, which appears as a result of the irregular sitting position in front of a monitor or TV screen. There is a huge percent of children in Junior High and High Schools who have a crooked posture, and practically all of them frequently play video-games. Children also frequently complain about the pain in their hands, induced by hours of playing video-games each day. Constant repetition of same moves can in time induce damage to joints, and skin irritation. A boy recently ended up in hospital thanks to the fact that he used his force-feedback controller seven hours a day, which severely damaged his wrists, knuckles and hand nerves. Some games also used to provoke epilepsy. Apart from this, one of the possible problems that can arise due to intensive staring into the screen is sight deterioration. Hours of watching the monitor (mainly in darkened rooms) which displays rapidly changing pictures can impair sight, and if the player already had a weakened sight, it can only make the situation worse. This mainly goes for games which take place in dark surroundings (which is most games for that matter). All these problems only appear after intense playing; meaning that reasonable playing with breaks cannot be harmful. In the last ten years, the number of hours a child spends playing video games per week increased from 2.8 to 4.3. Many children spend far more time trapped in virtual worlds than ever before.
These physical problems can easily be made up for, but the mental problems are there to stay. Parents and psychologists all agree that the worst problem about video games is violence. Violence has been present in computer entertainment ever since its start, and today, well, you can hardly imagine a game without it. It is a sad truth that violence became a part of our daily lives, from maltreatment in the family, to the wars all around the world; but is its presence so necessary in video games and how harmful is it?
Just look at a couple of marketing slogans to see how far all this went:
*Kill your friends, guilt free.
*More fun than shooting your neighbor's cat.
*As easy as killing babies with axes (Carmageddon).
Violence in video games can be split into several categories: Fantasy and Human violence, which can further be split into third-person shooters and first person shooters, the latter currently being the most popular game genre.
Look at how popular different categories of games are:
Fantasy violence - 32%
Sport - 29%
General Entertainment - 20%
Human Violence - 17%
Educational Games - 2%
Does this tell you how much young people prefer violent games? And if we consider the fact that violence tends to be present in sport simulations as well, the situation is more than disturbing.
Why should violence in computer games be more dangerous than the violence that can be seen on the TV? Because video-games go both ways - they are interactive and cast the player in the virtual world; they make the player identify himself with the main character whose actions have an influence on the plot. One of the greatest problems here is that murder and violence performed by the hero of the game are practically never punished, and often even rewarded. This creates a feeling in children that violence is right, and kids simply adopt violent behavior because they see nothing wrong about it. The interactive element of the point-and-shoot video games lets children practice their shooting skills, which eventually become reflexes. Scientific research proved that children who played violent games tend to be more aggressive than the children who didn't. This, in combination with a number of various sociological factors connected to the child's upbringing can produce good conditions for developing an extremely violent psyche.
Everybody probably remembers the massacre that took place in 1999 in the Columbine High School, Colorado when two pupils murdered twelve of their friends and teachers before committing suicide. Investigation proved that the two of them were big Doom fans and that they used to play this game every day. You cannot claim that the game directly induced this (as many other kids had been playing it without killing their friends and teachers), but it certainly had some influence. In the Paducah case, a fourteen year-old boy killed three and wounded five pupils in his school. He turned out to be an avid Doom, Quake and Mortal Combat player. The most interesting thing about this case is the accuracy with which the boy shot his victims - each victim received one bullet, and before this, he never even used a gun. He obviously had a natural talent for using firearms and a lot of practice in video-games (I highly disagree with this point; it's way too speculative - Ed). In the latest case of multiple homicides in Erfurt, Germany, a boy killed eighteen people in the school from which he was expelled. The boy also turned out to be a player of violent video-games. Are those games the main reason he did this? Probably not (in this specific case the boy was no stranger to domestic violence and maltreatment), but there still is a possibility that these games made him feel that he can do whatever he wants, and get away with it, which was simply triggered by the stressful situation when he got expelled. Though this doesn't prove anything, as most of us can tell a difference between fiction and reality, it is possible that persons with a potential for mental disorders can be pushed over the edge by erroneous conclusions suggested by the general concept of violent video games.
How do you fight violence in computer games? ESRB classifies games into categories depending on their contents in order to prevent kids of a certain age to play games of inadequate contents (violence, foul language, nudity, etc), but this is certainly not enough as children find their way around it. Most can be done by parents who can give their children more attention in their critical age. This parental attention, a good and reliable and loving family should keep the increased level of violence in teenagers (which is quite normal) from drastic outbursts. And this is in my opinion the best possible way of prevention; far more efficient than applying rigid laws made by people who are led by political points and not by the needs of teenagers and our society as a whole.
Are computer-games dangerous? There is no real answer, but what we can reasonably conclude is that playing video games is harmless if done in a normal measure. Overdoing it could cause a series of physical and mental problems which combined with real-life problems can turn an adolescent into a time-bomb. However, the same goes for just about any activity in life that is performed in a fanatical manner. You can be a fanatical supporter of The Beatles and decide to shoot John Lennon one day.
Still, not even a scientific proof that games are dangerous would much influence the kind of games that would be developed, as game publishers have to stick primarily to the laws of the market. All we can do is try to minimize their influence on children until they are old enough to determine what's right and what's wrong. As parents, the easiest thing we can do is try to blame all other things but ourselves.
Research shows that as much as 92% of children between 4 and 17 years of age play video games. This is a huge percentage and one cannot deny the amount of influence this form of entertainment has on forming their personalities. Children this age tend to absorb and imitate all they see, and this makes computer-games and TV highly important factors in growing-up.
Neither TV nor computer-games were able to stand up to the global increase of violence in the world in the last two decades. This is why parents are being more and more concerned for the mental health of their children. The question is whether computer games can affect children's physical and mental health. The results were always too vague to bring us to a definite conclusion. So, there is no scientific proof that video-games are harmful, but…
One of the most common medical problems connected typically to playing video games is crooked posture, which appears as a result of the irregular sitting position in front of a monitor or TV screen. There is a huge percent of children in Junior High and High Schools who have a crooked posture, and practically all of them frequently play video-games. Children also frequently complain about the pain in their hands, induced by hours of playing video-games each day. Constant repetition of same moves can in time induce damage to joints, and skin irritation. A boy recently ended up in hospital thanks to the fact that he used his force-feedback controller seven hours a day, which severely damaged his wrists, knuckles and hand nerves. Some games also used to provoke epilepsy. Apart from this, one of the possible problems that can arise due to intensive staring into the screen is sight deterioration. Hours of watching the monitor (mainly in darkened rooms) which displays rapidly changing pictures can impair sight, and if the player already had a weakened sight, it can only make the situation worse. This mainly goes for games which take place in dark surroundings (which is most games for that matter). All these problems only appear after intense playing; meaning that reasonable playing with breaks cannot be harmful. In the last ten years, the number of hours a child spends playing video games per week increased from 2.8 to 4.3. Many children spend far more time trapped in virtual worlds than ever before.
These physical problems can easily be made up for, but the mental problems are there to stay. Parents and psychologists all agree that the worst problem about video games is violence. Violence has been present in computer entertainment ever since its start, and today, well, you can hardly imagine a game without it. It is a sad truth that violence became a part of our daily lives, from maltreatment in the family, to the wars all around the world; but is its presence so necessary in video games and how harmful is it?
Just look at a couple of marketing slogans to see how far all this went:
*Kill your friends, guilt free.
*More fun than shooting your neighbor's cat.
*As easy as killing babies with axes (Carmageddon).
Violence in video games can be split into several categories: Fantasy and Human violence, which can further be split into third-person shooters and first person shooters, the latter currently being the most popular game genre.
Look at how popular different categories of games are:
Fantasy violence - 32%
Sport - 29%
General Entertainment - 20%
Human Violence - 17%
Educational Games - 2%
Does this tell you how much young people prefer violent games? And if we consider the fact that violence tends to be present in sport simulations as well, the situation is more than disturbing.
Why should violence in computer games be more dangerous than the violence that can be seen on the TV? Because video-games go both ways - they are interactive and cast the player in the virtual world; they make the player identify himself with the main character whose actions have an influence on the plot. One of the greatest problems here is that murder and violence performed by the hero of the game are practically never punished, and often even rewarded. This creates a feeling in children that violence is right, and kids simply adopt violent behavior because they see nothing wrong about it. The interactive element of the point-and-shoot video games lets children practice their shooting skills, which eventually become reflexes. Scientific research proved that children who played violent games tend to be more aggressive than the children who didn't. This, in combination with a number of various sociological factors connected to the child's upbringing can produce good conditions for developing an extremely violent psyche.
Everybody probably remembers the massacre that took place in 1999 in the Columbine High School, Colorado when two pupils murdered twelve of their friends and teachers before committing suicide. Investigation proved that the two of them were big Doom fans and that they used to play this game every day. You cannot claim that the game directly induced this (as many other kids had been playing it without killing their friends and teachers), but it certainly had some influence. In the Paducah case, a fourteen year-old boy killed three and wounded five pupils in his school. He turned out to be an avid Doom, Quake and Mortal Combat player. The most interesting thing about this case is the accuracy with which the boy shot his victims - each victim received one bullet, and before this, he never even used a gun. He obviously had a natural talent for using firearms and a lot of practice in video-games (I highly disagree with this point; it's way too speculative - Ed). In the latest case of multiple homicides in Erfurt, Germany, a boy killed eighteen people in the school from which he was expelled. The boy also turned out to be a player of violent video-games. Are those games the main reason he did this? Probably not (in this specific case the boy was no stranger to domestic violence and maltreatment), but there still is a possibility that these games made him feel that he can do whatever he wants, and get away with it, which was simply triggered by the stressful situation when he got expelled. Though this doesn't prove anything, as most of us can tell a difference between fiction and reality, it is possible that persons with a potential for mental disorders can be pushed over the edge by erroneous conclusions suggested by the general concept of violent video games.
How do you fight violence in computer games? ESRB classifies games into categories depending on their contents in order to prevent kids of a certain age to play games of inadequate contents (violence, foul language, nudity, etc), but this is certainly not enough as children find their way around it. Most can be done by parents who can give their children more attention in their critical age. This parental attention, a good and reliable and loving family should keep the increased level of violence in teenagers (which is quite normal) from drastic outbursts. And this is in my opinion the best possible way of prevention; far more efficient than applying rigid laws made by people who are led by political points and not by the needs of teenagers and our society as a whole.
Are computer-games dangerous? There is no real answer, but what we can reasonably conclude is that playing video games is harmless if done in a normal measure. Overdoing it could cause a series of physical and mental problems which combined with real-life problems can turn an adolescent into a time-bomb. However, the same goes for just about any activity in life that is performed in a fanatical manner. You can be a fanatical supporter of The Beatles and decide to shoot John Lennon one day.
Still, not even a scientific proof that games are dangerous would much influence the kind of games that would be developed, as game publishers have to stick primarily to the laws of the market. All we can do is try to minimize their influence on children until they are old enough to determine what's right and what's wrong. As parents, the easiest thing we can do is try to blame all other things but ourselves.
My theory is that children buy violent computer games because they can express themselves in away which they cant in the real world. Its great, a win win situation the kids get to blow up things and people in a virtual reality instead of killing people in real life. Of course with everytrhing there is an excepsion you get the chirldren of parents who really dont care they let them watch things they shouldnt and this desentises there minds. I do belive that the age restrictions are just about right, if gta series werent a 18 i can see every time a child does something wroung they would blame it on computer games.
Kyz22 wrote:
> That's all from me, tune in next week when we will be castrating
> crocodiles.
*
Sounds like compulsive viewing.
> That's all from me, tune in next week when we will be castrating
> crocodiles.
*
Sounds like compulsive viewing.
I think we all learnt an important lesson here.
There is no excuse for being moronic.
There is no excuse for being moronic.
Microchips wrote:
> Sam, I just searched google and came up with the same page, except it
> took ages to load.
Yeah, it took a while to load, but i think it was obvious it was copied anyway.
I searched on www.alltheweb.com and copied some of his article and clicked exact phrase..... HE DIDN'T EVEN CHANGE THE DAMN THING!
> Sam, I just searched google and came up with the same page, except it
> took ages to load.
Yeah, it took a while to load, but i think it was obvious it was copied anyway.
I searched on www.alltheweb.com and copied some of his article and clicked exact phrase..... HE DIDN'T EVEN CHANGE THE DAMN THING!
Sam, I just searched google and came up with the same page, except it took ages to load.
Anyway, um, busted, I suppose.
Anyway, um, busted, I suppose.
This should have been posted in "prime" really.
They influence wealky winded people and the VERY easily lead and stupid.
That's all from me, tune in next week when we will be castrating crocodiles.
They influence wealky winded people and the VERY easily lead and stupid.
That's all from me, tune in next week when we will be castrating crocodiles.
No. They don't influence people. And let that be the end of it.
In these first years of the twenty-first century, we can definitely state that computer-games became one of the unavoidable elements of modern life of the young people. They are not overly expensive, ever-present and easily accessible, so it is no wonder that the computer entertainment industry makes more money ($8 billion) in a year than Hollywood.
Research shows that as much as 92% of children between 4 and 17 years of age play video games. This is a huge percentage and one cannot deny the amount of influence this form of entertainment has on forming their personalities. Children this age tend to absorb and imitate all they see, and this makes computer-games and TV highly important factors in growing-up.
Neither TV nor computer-games were able to stand up to the global increase of violence in the world in the last two decades. This is why parents are being more and more concerned for the mental health of their children. The question is whether computer games can affect children's physical and mental health. The results were always too vague to bring us to a definite conclusion. So, there is no scientific proof that video-games are harmful, but…
One of the most common medical problems connected typically to playing video games is crooked posture, which appears as a result of the irregular sitting position in front of a monitor or TV screen. There is a huge percent of children in Junior High and High Schools who have a crooked posture, and practically all of them frequently play video-games. Children also frequently complain about the pain in their hands, induced by hours of playing video-games each day. Constant repetition of same moves can in time induce damage to joints, and skin irritation. A boy recently ended up in hospital thanks to the fact that he used his force-feedback controller seven hours a day, which severely damaged his wrists, knuckles and hand nerves. Some games also used to provoke epilepsy. Apart from this, one of the possible problems that can arise due to intensive staring into the screen is sight deterioration. Hours of watching the monitor (mainly in darkened rooms) which displays rapidly changing pictures can impair sight, and if the player already had a weakened sight, it can only make the situation worse. This mainly goes for games which take place in dark surroundings (which is most games for that matter). All these problems only appear after intense playing; meaning that reasonable playing with breaks cannot be harmful. In the last ten years, the number of hours a child spends playing video games per week increased from 2.8 to 4.3. Many children spend far more time trapped in virtual worlds than ever before.
These physical problems can easily be made up for, but the mental problems are there to stay. Parents and psychologists all agree that the worst problem about video games is violence. Violence has been present in computer entertainment ever since its start, and today, well, you can hardly imagine a game without it. It is a sad truth that violence became a part of our daily lives, from maltreatment in the family, to the wars all around the world; but is its presence so necessary in video games and how harmful is it?
Just look at a couple of marketing slogans to see how far all this went:
*Kill your friends, guilt free.
*More fun than shooting your neighbor's cat.
*As easy as killing babies with axes (Carmageddon).
Violence in video games can be split into several categories: Fantasy and Human violence, which can further be split into third-person shooters and first person shooters, the latter currently being the most popular game genre.
Look at how popular different categories of games are:
Fantasy violence - 32%
Sport - 29%
General Entertainment - 20%
Human Violence - 17%
Educational Games - 2%
Does this tell you how much young people prefer violent games? And if we consider the fact that violence tends to be present in sport simulations as well, the situation is more than disturbing.
Why should violence in computer games be more dangerous than the violence that can be seen on the TV? Because video-games go both ways - they are interactive and cast the player in the virtual world; they make the player identify himself with the main character whose actions have an influence on the plot. One of the greatest problems here is that murder and violence performed by the hero of the game are practically never punished, and often even rewarded. This creates a feeling in children that violence is right, and kids simply adopt violent behavior because they see nothing wrong about it. The interactive element of the point-and-shoot video games lets children practice their shooting skills, which eventually become reflexes. Scientific research proved that children who played violent games tend to be more aggressive than the children who didn't. This, in combination with a number of various sociological factors connected to the child's upbringing can produce good conditions for developing an extremely violent psyche.
Everybody probably remembers the massacre that took place in 1999 in the Columbine High School, Colorado when two pupils murdered twelve of their friends and teachers before committing suicide. Investigation proved that the two of them were big Doom fans and that they used to play this game every day. You cannot claim that the game directly induced this (as many other kids had been playing it without killing their friends and teachers), but it certainly had some influence. In the Paducah case, a fourteen year-old boy killed three and wounded five pupils in his school. He turned out to be an avid Doom, Quake and Mortal Combat player. The most interesting thing about this case is the accuracy with which the boy shot his victims - each victim received one bullet, and before this, he never even used a gun. He obviously had a natural talent for using firearms and a lot of practice in video-games (I highly disagree with this point; it's way too speculative - Ed). In the latest case of multiple homicides in Erfurt, Germany, a boy killed eighteen people in the school from which he was expelled. The boy also turned out to be a player of violent video-games. Are those games the main reason he did this? Probably not (in this specific case the boy was no stranger to domestic violence and maltreatment), but there still is a possibility that these games made him feel that he can do whatever he wants, and get away with it, which was simply triggered by the stressful situation when he got expelled. Though this doesn't prove anything, as most of us can tell a difference between fiction and reality, it is possible that persons with a potential for mental disorders can be pushed over the edge by erroneous conclusions suggested by the general concept of violent video games.
How do you fight violence in computer games? ESRB classifies games into categories depending on their contents in order to prevent kids of a certain age to play games of inadequate contents (violence, foul language, nudity, etc), but this is certainly not enough as children find their way around it. Most can be done by parents who can give their children more attention in their critical age. This parental attention, a good and reliable and loving family should keep the increased level of violence in teenagers (which is quite normal) from drastic outbursts. And this is in my opinion the best possible way of prevention; far more efficient than applying rigid laws made by people who are led by political points and not by the needs of teenagers and our society as a whole.
Are computer-games dangerous? There is no real answer, but what we can reasonably conclude is that playing video games is harmless if done in a normal measure. Overdoing it could cause a series of physical and mental problems which combined with real-life problems can turn an adolescent into a time-bomb. However, the same goes for just about any activity in life that is performed in a fanatical manner. You can be a fanatical supporter of The Beatles and decide to shoot John Lennon one day.
Still, not even a scientific proof that games are dangerous would much influence the kind of games that would be developed, as game publishers have to stick primarily to the laws of the market. All we can do is try to minimize their influence on children until they are old enough to determine what's right and what's wrong. As parents, the easiest thing we can do is try to blame all other things but ourselves.
Research shows that as much as 92% of children between 4 and 17 years of age play video games. This is a huge percentage and one cannot deny the amount of influence this form of entertainment has on forming their personalities. Children this age tend to absorb and imitate all they see, and this makes computer-games and TV highly important factors in growing-up.
Neither TV nor computer-games were able to stand up to the global increase of violence in the world in the last two decades. This is why parents are being more and more concerned for the mental health of their children. The question is whether computer games can affect children's physical and mental health. The results were always too vague to bring us to a definite conclusion. So, there is no scientific proof that video-games are harmful, but…
One of the most common medical problems connected typically to playing video games is crooked posture, which appears as a result of the irregular sitting position in front of a monitor or TV screen. There is a huge percent of children in Junior High and High Schools who have a crooked posture, and practically all of them frequently play video-games. Children also frequently complain about the pain in their hands, induced by hours of playing video-games each day. Constant repetition of same moves can in time induce damage to joints, and skin irritation. A boy recently ended up in hospital thanks to the fact that he used his force-feedback controller seven hours a day, which severely damaged his wrists, knuckles and hand nerves. Some games also used to provoke epilepsy. Apart from this, one of the possible problems that can arise due to intensive staring into the screen is sight deterioration. Hours of watching the monitor (mainly in darkened rooms) which displays rapidly changing pictures can impair sight, and if the player already had a weakened sight, it can only make the situation worse. This mainly goes for games which take place in dark surroundings (which is most games for that matter). All these problems only appear after intense playing; meaning that reasonable playing with breaks cannot be harmful. In the last ten years, the number of hours a child spends playing video games per week increased from 2.8 to 4.3. Many children spend far more time trapped in virtual worlds than ever before.
These physical problems can easily be made up for, but the mental problems are there to stay. Parents and psychologists all agree that the worst problem about video games is violence. Violence has been present in computer entertainment ever since its start, and today, well, you can hardly imagine a game without it. It is a sad truth that violence became a part of our daily lives, from maltreatment in the family, to the wars all around the world; but is its presence so necessary in video games and how harmful is it?
Just look at a couple of marketing slogans to see how far all this went:
*Kill your friends, guilt free.
*More fun than shooting your neighbor's cat.
*As easy as killing babies with axes (Carmageddon).
Violence in video games can be split into several categories: Fantasy and Human violence, which can further be split into third-person shooters and first person shooters, the latter currently being the most popular game genre.
Look at how popular different categories of games are:
Fantasy violence - 32%
Sport - 29%
General Entertainment - 20%
Human Violence - 17%
Educational Games - 2%
Does this tell you how much young people prefer violent games? And if we consider the fact that violence tends to be present in sport simulations as well, the situation is more than disturbing.
Why should violence in computer games be more dangerous than the violence that can be seen on the TV? Because video-games go both ways - they are interactive and cast the player in the virtual world; they make the player identify himself with the main character whose actions have an influence on the plot. One of the greatest problems here is that murder and violence performed by the hero of the game are practically never punished, and often even rewarded. This creates a feeling in children that violence is right, and kids simply adopt violent behavior because they see nothing wrong about it. The interactive element of the point-and-shoot video games lets children practice their shooting skills, which eventually become reflexes. Scientific research proved that children who played violent games tend to be more aggressive than the children who didn't. This, in combination with a number of various sociological factors connected to the child's upbringing can produce good conditions for developing an extremely violent psyche.
Everybody probably remembers the massacre that took place in 1999 in the Columbine High School, Colorado when two pupils murdered twelve of their friends and teachers before committing suicide. Investigation proved that the two of them were big Doom fans and that they used to play this game every day. You cannot claim that the game directly induced this (as many other kids had been playing it without killing their friends and teachers), but it certainly had some influence. In the Paducah case, a fourteen year-old boy killed three and wounded five pupils in his school. He turned out to be an avid Doom, Quake and Mortal Combat player. The most interesting thing about this case is the accuracy with which the boy shot his victims - each victim received one bullet, and before this, he never even used a gun. He obviously had a natural talent for using firearms and a lot of practice in video-games (I highly disagree with this point; it's way too speculative - Ed). In the latest case of multiple homicides in Erfurt, Germany, a boy killed eighteen people in the school from which he was expelled. The boy also turned out to be a player of violent video-games. Are those games the main reason he did this? Probably not (in this specific case the boy was no stranger to domestic violence and maltreatment), but there still is a possibility that these games made him feel that he can do whatever he wants, and get away with it, which was simply triggered by the stressful situation when he got expelled. Though this doesn't prove anything, as most of us can tell a difference between fiction and reality, it is possible that persons with a potential for mental disorders can be pushed over the edge by erroneous conclusions suggested by the general concept of violent video games.
How do you fight violence in computer games? ESRB classifies games into categories depending on their contents in order to prevent kids of a certain age to play games of inadequate contents (violence, foul language, nudity, etc), but this is certainly not enough as children find their way around it. Most can be done by parents who can give their children more attention in their critical age. This parental attention, a good and reliable and loving family should keep the increased level of violence in teenagers (which is quite normal) from drastic outbursts. And this is in my opinion the best possible way of prevention; far more efficient than applying rigid laws made by people who are led by political points and not by the needs of teenagers and our society as a whole.
Are computer-games dangerous? There is no real answer, but what we can reasonably conclude is that playing video games is harmless if done in a normal measure. Overdoing it could cause a series of physical and mental problems which combined with real-life problems can turn an adolescent into a time-bomb. However, the same goes for just about any activity in life that is performed in a fanatical manner. You can be a fanatical supporter of The Beatles and decide to shoot John Lennon one day.
Still, not even a scientific proof that games are dangerous would much influence the kind of games that would be developed, as game publishers have to stick primarily to the laws of the market. All we can do is try to minimize their influence on children until they are old enough to determine what's right and what's wrong. As parents, the easiest thing we can do is try to blame all other things but ourselves.