Munich (dpa) - Juvenile crime and failure at school do correlate
with the amount of time a youth spends playing violent computer
games, according to a German study which challenges the conventional
wisdom that the games are harmless, a report Wednesday said.
A school psychologist in Munich, Werner Hopf, surveyed 653
schoolboys over two years, the Hamburg-based magazine Geo Wissen
reported.
Playing the games, in which boys pretend to maim and kill, was the
best predictor of which boys would get into trouble with police,
though other predictors included family poverty, bad relationships
with parents or growing up among criminals.
Boys playing violent games were far more likely to be charged with
assault, vandalism, bullying and theft from vending machines and also
gained worse marks at school. Watching violent movies was not so
strongly linked to delinquency.
School massacres in Germany by boys who played such games have
prompted public debate about banning "first-person shooter" games,
but civil-liberties groups and the games industry have denied any
significant linkage. No legislation has been passed.
Copyright 2008 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH