3 Question interview with Robert Berger, a therapist, on the subject of violence in video games and early exposure to the internet.

1-What do you think about violence in media in general? Is it harmful to youth, and if so, in what way?

I believe that today's youth aren't quite as susceptible to violence as most people would believe. While extreme overexposure to violence can and will always cause some degree of mental change, there's no guarantee on what degree the extreme is. Considering that each child has a different brain, and each child has been raised in a different home, I'd say that the degree of how bad violent media is to children depends quite heavily on their family conditions. For example, say a kid who is 8 years old has never had exposure to anything other than love, coming from his parents. He goes to a private school, as we'll say they're fairly wealthy. In his case, sudden and dramatic exposure to violent media causes him to cry, thus creating a kind of predesignated reaction in the future. Another kid, raised in identical circumstances might have a completely different reaction, so I don't believe that it's fair to say that violence in media is harmful or harmless.

2-Do you believe that any form of today's media has a large effect on children?

Yes. The internet seems to have a pretty interesting effect. Children who have unrestricted access to the internet at a young age tend to have problems in contacting and dealing with others in social situations where they have no penalties or consequences in saying whatever they want. For example, an 8 year old kid can post that he 'thinks you should curl up and die because nobody loves you' in response to a comment on a chat forum, and have no consequences in reality. However, the problem with this for younger children is that they quickly begin to mix the two separate worlds together, and begin acting more and more hostile in response to figures of authority at an early age.

3-Apparently, by age 21, the average American will have spent 10 thousand hours playing video games, a number which is quite close to how long they've spent in school. What do you think about these statistics, and what are the reasons for why this is happening?

In the past, when an alternative to reality has presented itself, younger people tend to seek it out, as an alternative to the reality which presents many problems and hardships to them on a day to day basis. This becomes even more prevalent in a society which is facing essentially 'repeated bad news'. If the real world proves too much, humans naturally seek an alternative. Which is why both Drugs and Alcohol are so widespread and popular. They provide an alternative world, where everyone is your friend, and you always feel good, and you seek to replicate this feeling as often as possible, often pushing you through whatever else you have to deal with during the day, in order to return home and replicate this feeling as soon as possible, or causing you abandon your responsibilities in order to replicate the feeling. I wouldn't be surprised if video games have an addictive quality to them—they cause the brain to secrete a chemical that hasn't been seen before by scientists.