Grand Theft Childhood

Over the last month or so, several gaming outlets, including Kotaku and GamePolitics, have profiled an upcoming book entitled Grand Theft Childhood. Despite what some might assume based on the title, the book is actually a balanced treatment of the subject of kids and videogames. The two authors, Larry Kutner and Cheryl K. Olsen, are psychiatry faculty at Harvard University in Massachusetts.

Moreover, Kutner recently released the results of a study that hold some interesting implications for gaming. The study, which surveyed 1,300 young people across the United States, found, first of all, that there is no statistical connection between gaming and violent behavior. Kutner notes on his book’s website that of the 37 non-drug, non-gang violent crimes in U.S. schools since 1974 (including Columbine and Paducah), only 1 in 8 of the perpetrators were active gamers.

Secondly, the study found that those who were non-gamers were at a significantly greater risk of being antisocial than gamers. "It seems that playing video games for boys is a marker of social confidence. That surprised us," Dr. Kutner explained. "It's interesting if you look at what happened a year ago at Virgina Tech... [the attacker's] suitemates who he shared a dorm room with said that he didn't play video games at all and that struck them as really odd because everyone else did. That fell right in line with our research findings, that the kids who don't play at all are actually at greater risk... It says something about their social relationships.”

Dr. Kutner also noted that "if you look at violent crime in the US over the past 20 years among teenagers, it's ... gone down significantly, and if you look at video game play, it's gone up significantly."

The one notable exception are young gamers who play violent M-rated games for more than 15 hours a week. These gamers, Kutner says, are at a greater risk of getting into trouble.