"Hours after I had played a first-person shooter game," she writes, "I could not erase the over-the-gun-barrel perspective from my mind, nor could I expunge from memory the image of my enemy's head exploding in a profuse, bloody mess when I shot him (or the fleeting feeling of satisfaction that my 'kill' gave me. . . . [I]mages have influence, and it is not merely moralizers who are concerned about their long-term effects, particularly on children who are already living in an image-saturated culture."
These games allow a child to take on different identities, lending a sense of power and control, but only through violence. These games can become addicting, offering immediate gratification that makes disciplined study all the more difficult. Nearly all the gamers between the ages of 12 and 17 have been playing since the age of 2, according to the Entertainment Software Association, a lobby for the trade. Identities are subsumed inside the characters of the game.
Vacation houses on the beach advertise themselves as "computer-friendly," and children routinely pack spare batteries in beach bags. Richard Louv, author of "Last Child in the Woods," writes that children suffer a "nature-deficit disorder." A British study found that 8-year-olds reported knowing all the images in the Pokemon video game, but couldn't identify otters, beetles or oak trees.
Pediatricians urge parents to limit older children's gaming time and suggest no screen time at all for children under 2 because it can affect their brain development. Bill Gates promises that the Xbox, Microsoft's video game system, will pull the family together in their wired living room, but it's more likely that the Xbox will replace the sandbox.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I write this on my laptop from a deck overlooking the beautiful Currituck Sound on North Carolina's spectacular Outer Banks, with my grandsons Teodoro, 9, and Enrique, 6, lost in their LEGO Star Wars video game. Delight is written across their faces -- and mine.