Study shows that killer games do not make killer kids.

University of Southern California sociologist Karen Sternheimer, has been researching the possibility of the missing link between video game violence and kids since 1999. She said blaming video games for youth violence fails to take into account other major factors.

"A symphony of events controls violence," said Sternheimer, who began her research after experts blamed the video game "Doom" for the gun rampage at Columbine High School in Colorado in which two students killed 13 people and then themselves.

"It was a tragic and, very fortunately, rare event and it was discouraging to see that the conversation often started and stopped at video games."

Sternheimer's article, "Do Video Games Kill?," will appear in the American Sociological Association's Contexts magazine as the European Union weighs outlawing certain violent games and harmonizing national penalties for retailers caught such products to under-age children.

Her research, involved studying media coverage and FBI statistics detailing trends on youth crime, found that in the 10 years after the release of "Doom" -- and other violence targeted titles -- juvenile homicide arrest rates in the United States fell 77 percent.

In addition, Sternheimer found that students have less than a 7 in 10 million chance of being killed at school. “If we want to understand why young become homicidal, we need to look beyond the games they play or we miss some of the biggest pieces of the puzzle," she said. Karen Sternheimer lists other factors such as community and family violence and less parental involvement as other possible factors.

Sternheimer said violent video games have come to carry the baggage of social angst over youth violence as the industry has grown into a $10 billion-plus giant that towers over Hollywood box office sales. Blaming video games is a quick fix for when the public demands an explanation for why children become murderers.

In the US, the video game industry is self-regulated and retailers have the deciding factor whether or not to sell a video game. Due to demands from concerned consumers, the industry has given combat video games an age appropriate grade. An M-rated game is intended for mature audiences. These games contain content judged appropriate for people aged 17 and older. However, if is up to the buyer / parent on whether or not to buy the game for a child.

Putting the blame on video games gives a false impression that society should forgive the environment in which the child was raised and removes the responsibility of the criminal. However, youth criminal activity is more complicated than any video game and there is no one simple solution to answering why do kids kill?

Teaching in the Juvenile Justice System

More Than Just Fun And Games

Video games good teachers?

Source: Researchers weigh in on value of digital lessons

HOUSTON - Tired of badgering the kids to quit wasting time with those computer and video games and get started on homework? Here's a news flash for the 21st Century: It turns out many of the games might be better than homework.

In a series of research projects as likely to thrill young people as they are to horrify their parents and teachers, academic experts across the country are unearthing educational benefits in the digital games that surveys show are now played by more than 80 percent of American young people aged 8 - 18.

At the top of the experts' lists are simulation and role-playing games, often played on the Internet alongside thousands of other participants, because of the vocabulary, reasoning and social skills they can boost. But even some of the most violent games, such as the notorious Grand Theft Auto, have some valuable lessons to teach in the right circumstances, researchers are finding.

Replacing rote memorization |

Some researchers even suggest supplanting much of the traditional back-to-basics K-12 curriculum with a new generation of game-based materials to capture the increasingly short attention spans of today's youth.

"Right now, in American schools, we spend most of the first six or seven years of math education teaching kids to do what a 99-cent calculator does," said David Williamson Shaffer, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of a recent book, "How Computer Games Help Children Learn."

"We have this view that schooling is the natural and inevitable way to get kids ready for life in the world," said Shaffer, a leader in the field of digital learning. "But it shouldn't come as a surprise that when our economy has changed, when innovation and creativity are much more important than rote memorization, that the system needs some real updating to train kids how to use computer games to solve problems in the real world."

"We realized that over 80 percent of American kids have game consoles at home, 90 percent of kids are online and 50 percent of them are producing things online, so we really need to understand what is going on here," said Constance Yowell, director of the MacArthur Foundation's digital research initiative.

"This is what kids are doing, so we need to know both the positive benefits and the unintended consequences."

Simulation games in particular have already been embraced by some educators, as well as many businesses and the U.S. military, as effective ways to introduce people to environments and situations that would otherwise be too expensive, dangerous or impossible to gain access to.

The computer games and tools being studied are generations removed from the static, linear educational software commonly found inside many of the nation's schools today -- software that girls and boys quickly master and then discard as boring.

"There are a lot of terrible educational games out there, where you have to do something un-fun, like solve five math problems, so you can do something fun, like play a game," said Ben Stokes, a games expert at the MacArthur Foundation.

Instead, the experts are interested in the educational benefits of commercially available games that were not expressly designed for school use -- simulation games like Zoo Tycoon, in which elementary school-age children build virtual zoos by selecting animals, creating appropriate habitats, managing food budgets and even setting the prices of popcorn at the concession stands.

The verdict on the potential benefits of computer and video games is not unanimous, however. Some critics worry about the persistent racial and economic gaps in access to computers and the Internet: 60 percent of white households, but only 36 percent of black households, had Internet access at home in 2003, according to the Census Bureau.

"The only thing we know for sure is that video games are effective at desensitizing people to extreme violence," said Edward Miller, a senior researcher at the Alliance for Childhood, a nonprofit child advocacy group. "There is no evidence that video games are good at teaching problem-solving or collaboration or the other higher-order skills that these proponents are claiming."

More Than Just Fun And Games

The gaming-violence connection: why society finds it comforting

Source: The gaming-violence connection: why society finds it comforting

Ars has extensively covered the attempts to legislate restrictions on violent video games and the ambiguous science that supports those efforts. An aspect of this that frequently escapes analysis is why these legislative efforts gain so much traction despite their lack of a solid scientific foundation. Writing in the journal Contexts, USC sociology lecturer Karen Sternheimer analyzes these efforts in terms of ongoing societal fears regarding the influence of media on children.

Sternheimer notes an obvious but underemphasized figure: despite the proliferation of violent, first-person shooters in the wake of Doom, juvenile homicide rates have fallen in the decade since its release. Random school shootings remain incredibly rare; for all forms of homicide, students face a seven in 10 million chance of being a victim.

Random school shootings remain so rare, in fact, that Sternheimer reports that the FBI found it impossible to generate a profile of a "typical" shooter. This leads to a number of difficulties. Linking violence to the perpetrators' background might wind up revealing aspects of the shooter's predominantly white, middle-class origin that helped foster their violence. Nobody seems interested in doing this sort of analysis, perhaps in part because much of the media belongs to that same group.