The American Academy of Pediatrics has concluded that media violence is a clear factor in aggression in children – it could lead to a teenager carrying a weapon! The correlation between kids spending time with violent video games and displaying violent or aggressive behavior such as bullying is apparently as high as that of smoking and developing lung cancer.

Now before we all get defensive about our games, they do make it clear that media violence is merely a risk factor and not necessarily the primary reason for adolescent violence. Their recommendation? Doctors and parents should monitor and manage how much time their children spend with games, movies, TV shows, and music during their developmental years. In addition, they had some recommendations for the entertainment industry:

• Do not glamorize weapon carrying.
• Eliminate the use of violence in a comic or sexual context.
• Eliminate gratuitous portrayals of interpersonal violence.
• The pain and loss suffered by victims should be shown if violence must be used.
• Video games should not use humans or other living targets and points should not be awarded for killing.
• Violent video games should be limited to age-restricted areas of arcades.

These recommendations are just for games that are accessible to younger kids. It’s up to the parents to make sure games that are in fact more violent stay out of their kids’ hands – which means they need to read the ratings and inform themselves, and not just blame the industry and government when parents buy their 4-year-old a copy of GTA4.

ABC News
via Destructoid