Violent Video Games and Other Media as Bad as Smoking
From Reuters via Yahoo! News:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Violence depicted on television, in films and video games raises the risk of aggressive behavior in adults and young viewers and poses a serious threat to public health, according to a new study.
After reviewing more than 50 years of research on the impact of violence in the media, L. Rowell Huesmann, of the University of Michigan, and his colleague Brad Bushman concluded that only smoking posed a greater danger.“Exposure to violent electronic media has a larger effect than all but one other well known threat to public health. The only effect slightly larger than the effect of media violence on aggression is that of cigarette smoking on lung cancer,” he said in a statement.
Video games pose a serious threat to public health? With that assertion along with the comparison to smoking, how long do you figure before some liberal legislator tries to introduce a “violent video game” or “violent media” tax? After all, congress has recently considered reviewing the ESRB game rating system.