Video Games Make Kids Fat,
Violent, Swedish Experts Say

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.

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, Sony Corp's PlayStation and Nintendo 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.