Daily Mail back on the game-bashing train

The Daily Mail is targeting the games industry yet again this morning as the UK newspaper

reports

on a new study that claims video games, the internet and TV are to blame for ‘the lurch to more and more violence which we know can breed violence and increase mental illness”.

The claims come from the Children’s Society’s Good Childhood Report, which was conducted by a panel of industry experts” including former aid to Tony Blair Lord Layard and English Children’s Commissioner Sir Albert Aynsley-Green.

There is much evidence that exposure to violent images encourages aggressive behaviour,” the report reads. On television, violence is frequently shown as part of a normal human life.

The violence is both physical and psychological, and violent argument appears as a standard response to disagreement. To be sure, there is plenty of violence in Shakespeare and in the cinema. But people used to go to the cinema once a week, whereas our children now watch television for an average of 17 hours a week.”

As well as video games, also accused of causing psychological, moral and emotional damage was celebrity culture, single parents and parent’s aggressive pursuit of personal success has pushed the needs of children aside”.

The Daily Mail famously ran a piece in May last year where it asked former TV presenter Anne Diamond to play a number of violent games and access the psychological damage each would inflict on her kids.