Video Games Make Kids Fat, Violent, Swedish Experts Say
 

By Peter Starck

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Video games can make children fat and, in the case of violent games popular among teenage and younger boys, aggressive and even criminal, Swedish experts said on Monday

The games industry, estimated at $200 million a year in Sweden and $10 billion in the United States, is dominated on the hardware side by Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox (news - web sites), Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news) (news - web sites)'s PlayStation and Nintendo (news - web sites) Co. Ltd's Game Boy and GameCube consoles.


Electronic Arts Inc., Nintendo, Activision Inc., and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. are among leading games title publishers.


Take-Two's Rockstar unit's Grand Theft Auto -- a game condemned as "horrendous" by former U.S. Democratic presidential hopeful Joseph Lieberman -- is among titles mentioned by a Swedish television documentary in connection with violent youth crimes.


"It's concerning because they (video game players) are rehearsing scripts of behavior that will possibly play themselves out in real life," Michael Rich, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics who has studied the effects of entertainment media on the physical and mental health of children, was quoted as saying in the 45-minute "Deadly Game" documentary.


Monday's preview of the film, due for prime time broadcasting on Swedish TV4 television on Wednesday, was followed by a panel debate, which concluded that scientific findings of the effects, if any, of violent video games were scant.


"But it has been proved beyond dispute that people who watch a lot of violence on television develop aggressive behavior," said Frank Lindblad, a child psychiatrist at Sweden's Karolinska Institute university hospital.


DIFFUSE BORDER


"They run a very high risk of criminal behavior ... there's a lot suggesting that video games are worse," he said, noting that many players tended to identify themselves with game heroes.


"The border between the virtual reality and the real world becomes diffuse and that is dangerous," Lindblad said.


Gustav Niel-Berggren, a 16-year-old student who said he tended to spend many hours a day several days a week playing an interactive online action game called Counter-Strike, which focuses on killing opponent soldiers, disagreed.


"Shooting somebody in a game is just like scoring a goal in a football match," he said, dismissing the documentary's suggestion and Lindblad's fear that youths could not distinguish between the game world and real life.


Elisabeth Junttila, a mother of six and head of a nationwide association promoting closer ties between homes and schools, said some children became addicted to video games, spending all their waking hours in front of a computer screen gorging potato chips, pizza and soft drinks.


Anne Folke, co-founder of a lobby seeking to counteract through public awareness campaigns what it sees as the ill effects of video games, said games were consuming ever more of children's time.


"They are in poor physical shape, they eat unhealthily, grow fat and suffer insomnia," she said.

omg, I'm fat, in poor physical shape, and eat unhealthily! OH TEH NOEZ, I DON'T HAVE INSOMNIA, SO IT MUST NOT BE THE DAMN VIDEO GAMES YOU STUPID FUCKS! Maybe it's becuase we now have more food available to us that is unhealthy and it isn't JUST the games you stupid fucktards, maybe it's society ;)

Now, please, talk amongst yourelves while making fun of me for being a FAT ASS! :P ROFL ROFL

and anyone interested in sending me free exercise equipment, e-mail me at

I understand how videogames can make people fat (:cough:Everquest:cough:) but not violent. Unless the child has violent tendencies, a game cannot make them violent. I am very calm and gentle in person but I love violent games with ragdoll physics and dismemberment. Just because you play violent games doesn't mean you are violent.

That's what the fucking ESRB ratings are for, what else do they want? Don't blame the game companies, blame the parents or the crazy kids. I honestly didn't think vice city was too bad. The worse thing about it was the fountain heads.

Bullshit. I'm nonviolent to a fault, and I play (or played) every bloody, gory game since the original Wolfenstein.

All lies! I'm almost considered a Quaker and I weigh 110 pounds.

Vice city IS bad when the parents let their 6 or 7 year old kids play it, and they actually take it literally and try to kill people. Just take that one first grader who brought his dad's gun to school and shot his classmate...

Didn't Chooser go to Stockholm once?

Mr. Lee lives there, according to his profile.

Kid plays game, gets fat, feels bad about himself, becomes angry, takes it out on others. The only thing is, the only contact with people they have is on forums and games. So we are saft

Ah, so this explains why I randomly grab kids from behind bushes, slit their throats, dice them into pieces and bury them in someones backyard when I'm bored.

That would be the effect of Anime

Give me a break. If video games should be banned as they "inspire kids to be violent", why not ban television and literature as well? Television contains a lot more violence than video games, not to mention at a far more psychological level. You don't bump into your everyday in-movie lust murder in video games, you just face mindless monsters who head straight for the player upon sight. And literature, while not graphically violent, tends to contain a lot of psychological violence at times. If video games go, so should television and literature, it's as simple as that.

Time to move to the US chruser. I'd like to see them try to ban it here. It will never happen.

Okay, let me break down my post into terms easier to comprehend for you:

1) Banning video games is plain idiotic.
2) Video games contain violence, so do books and movies.
3) Banning books and movies due to violence is idiotic.
4) You shouldn't do idiotic things.

I don't think you took my post the way it was intended to be taken. I don't enjoy being called dumb either.

No, video games do NOT in ANY way make kids fat. The Chips, and Soda, and massive Chocolate they consume makes them fat, any dumbass sweed should be able to see that! Violence is good for us Americans, I mean , Without violence, Poor Iraq might be dropping nuclear weapons on our heads as we speak!!

Pot make kids fat, but if anything, they are not eating while trying to beat their favorite games. At least, I don't eat while I'm trying to beat a game.

Pot didn't make me fat. Hell, unlike most people, I didn't even get that hungry. I was dying of thirst though. I was laughing to hard to be able to drink anything too. It really sucked.

Thank you for sharing your awesome experience, KA. I now think more highly of you.

Ooooooook.