'Grand Theft' frenzy--grand illusion?

Bloggers wildly applauded Steven Johnson's op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times this week, which took on Sen. Hillary Clinton and her proposal to investigate the impact of video games on teenagers.

Clinton's request follows the ongoing scandal involving the hidden sex scenes in the video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas."

Johnson, author of "Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter," took issue with Clinton's charge that video games may be having a deleterious effect on children, instead arguing that "most of today's games force kids to learn complex rule systems, master challenging new interfaces, follow dozens of shifting variables in real time and prioritize between multiple objectives."

"In short, precisely the sorts of skills that they're going to need in the digital workplace of tomorrow," Johnson wrote.

Not too surprisingly, most of the blogosphere agreed.

Blog community response:

"For every child that actually got the bright idea to try car-jacking or some other violent behavior from a game, there must be thousands that have found new friends by going on-line to play or get advice, thousands who found a new peer group by wearing a gaming t-shirt to school or having friends over to play, and millions who got up after killing non-stop for 6 hours and placidly went to dinner with the parents and kissed Mom goodnight that evening. And they did so without knifing their sister or car-jacking the mini-van."
--Furtive Explorations

"A lot of years ago, when my older brother was addicted to hear (as of today, classic) rock all day long, my mom always told him to stop doing that and find something less "mind destructive" to do. Later years, when I became addict to video games in my teen years, she repeated the same lecture to me. My brother and I both graduated as Engineers, and we never "destroyed" our brains as my mom warned us. That's why I encourage my daughter to keep playing the video games she likes, of course, within the recommended ESRB rating for her age."
--Explicit Exposure

"I find that a lifetime of playing video games, even games of the was-that-a-bloody-eyeball? variety, does not seem to have made me especially violent. The debate over violent video games, however, never fails to put me on the brink of a rampage."
--Espoused