Video Games Hurt

CNET News has a report up about some potentially harmful effects of video games. Contrary to what you might expect given the general climate surrounding games these days, these concerns have to do not with inducing aggression, but rather with repetitive stress injuries. Such problems are theoretically more empirically demonstrable than claims that games provoke kids to real world violence, but there is a lack of definitive data on the subject. In the absence of completed comprehensive studies, there is still convincing evidence. An Australian study determined that 60% of teenage students using laptops at school reported neck and back pain. While such conditions are by no means specific to video games, younger computer and video game players likely to be using computers throughout the school day and then video games upon returning home are potentially more at risk simply due to the many hours spent in front of screens performing repeitive motions.

Some physical therapists and pediatricians are already citing cases of RSI in children as young as 8 years old. Kids complain of headaches, neck problems and backaches. And when pediatricians can't identify the source, they'll send the child to a physical therapist.

"We see so many more middle school children with neck (pain) and backaches," said Doreen Frank, a physical therapist based near Albany, N.Y. "When we evaluate them and find there's been no trauma or no new activity, it narrows down to the fact that they sit for way too long and then they're on the computer way too long," Frank said.