Lawrence Kutner, PhD, and his wife Cheryl K. Olson, ScD, recently appeared on X-Play to talk about the findings in their new research book Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do.

While anti-game activists and politicians have continually tried to tie violent video games to some of the nation's most despicable acts of real-life violence (including the recent Virgina Tech tragedy), Kutner and Olson, whose research was funded with $1.5 million by the U.S. Dept. of Justice, found after surveying around 1,300 kids in multiple states that "there is absolutely no evidence" that playing violent video games will turn kids into criminals.

"If you look at violent crime in the U.S. over the past 20 years among teenagers, it's gone down and gone down significantly, and if you look at video game play, it's gone up significantly," said Kutner.

Olson noted that many of the studies done by psychologists in recent years, which have tied aggression in video games to aggressive behavior, don't seem viable.

Kutner also clarified that there's a difference between short-term and long-term aggression effects. "If you go to the local Cineplex and see a Jackie Chan or Jet Li movie and you watch a bunch of teenagers come out of that, of course they're going to be sort of hitting each other and kicking; you know, they're excited. But that goes away very quickly. And so there's this leap of faith that if a child or teenager or even a young adult is exposed to this and they have a short term response, then that means it's going to change their behavior. We found it to be actually quite the opposite," said Kutner.

Kutner did state, however, that both boys and girls who play almost nothing but M-rated violent video games (and play those games for more than 15 hours a week), can be at greater risk for "getting into trouble." Olson added that this is a "risk marker; it doesn't mean it's causing it."

More interesting still is that boys who did not play any video games at all also had "significantly greater risk," Kutner explained, "It seems that playing video games for boys is a marker of social confidence. That surprised us."

He continued, "It's interesting if you look at what happened a year ago at Virgina Tech... [the attacker's] suitemates who he shared a dorm room with said that he didn't play video games at all and that struck them as really odd because everyone else did. And that fell right in line with our research findings, that the kids who don't play at all are actually at greater risk... It says something about their social relationships."

Kutner added that games can actually be quite valuable to society because they're more than just games; they're simulations. They give kids an opportunity to explore new worlds and try new environments that are not critical of them, "where they can make mistakes, recover, and practice for the real world."