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Both boys, now 11 and 9 I think, have been playing video games of any sort since they were in pre-school... and not necessarily the 'educational' variety either. Both boys have absolutely no social skills, their verbal skills are atrocious (the 9 year old still baby talks), will rarely pick up a book to read, and for any 'family' event, their nose is usually in their game boys.
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To be honest, what kid is going to get ten hours straight of gaming time? They come home from school, and a good way for them to relax is to play games. I think they key difference between games and normal TV is that games generally actively engage the mind. Problems to solve and obstacles to overcome - much more mentally engaging than books or TV. Fair enough if you don't want them killing pedestrians in GTA, get them an alternative.
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Not to lay blame on anybody, but a lot of low-income kids know little or nothing in their lives except video games and TV. Because (choose one or more):
*they're in a single-parent family, Mom is working two jobs to survive, the 12-year-old supervises the younger kids, and the only way to keep them under control is the near-hypnotic state of videogaming
*the parent(s) are substance-abusers who can't actually cope with raising a kid. Easier to throw a console at him and buy him whatever he wants.
* The kid's been physically abused by Mom, Dad, or one of a series of temporary stepfathers. Kids with a lot of rage tend to retreat into video games.
* The parents are poorly educated or illiterate, _both_ work two jobs to keep the family afloat, and when they come home, have just enough energy to get supper on the table and then collapse. They know they don't spend enough time with the kids, and buy them video consoles and games to do what they can to keep them happy. And occupied. Of course there's no time for anything else.
I've seen it. It's my opinion that at least 10 percent of kids today fall into these categories. I had a job working with homeless kids for a while -- kids with few social skills, little impulse control, little ability to focus on tasks. If something wasn't happening _every second_ they were bored. The only way to completely occupy them was to hand them a Gameboy. They'd been conditioned by a "world" in which stimulation is constant, feedback is immediate, and all the focus is internal, not external. When you got some of these kids to actually play, physically, they'd act out videogames on the playground. Just like that unreleased Xbox ad, only not funny.
Kids like this -- and there are a lot -- have _nothing else in their lives._ Was talking to a teacher in a low-income area the other day. She talked about visiting poor households where they had practically nothing, little furniture, few clothes, no books; but managed to have a TV or game console in _every room._ And the kids get a breakfast of Hot Cheetos on the way to school. These are not evil parents; they're stressed out, overworked, and completely uneducated. Which means they're also uneducated about the way to raise kids, nutrition, etc.
Where am I going with this. Guess I'm saying that unrestrained video console use is a problem. And there may be some lazy parents out there who could do better, but choose not to. But there's a real problem in that a whole lot of parents don't actually realize the damage they're doing, and actually _can't_ both raise the kid right and keep a roof over their heads simultaneously.
Back at the turn of the '20th century, there was a national outcry over a product called "Mother's Helper." It was a product meant to keep children quiet and docile when working-class mothers had to leave them home alone while they went off to work 12 hours in a clothing sweatshop. Turned out that "Mother's Helper" was full of opium, which was _not_ on the label. Outrage over products like "Mother's Helper" launced the federal regulatory initiatives that led to product safety laws, labeling regulations, the Food and Drug Administration, and more.
Eventually we'll find out what's "not on the label" with videogaming. We'll find out that too much of it has a deleterious and possibly irreversible effect on the young brain.