longbough

A friend of mine was a teenager in the early 70s. They raced real muscle cars (409s, GTOs etc.) around the city at night. He told me how he totaled his car and wrapped it around a tree. I don't think they had many racing video games in the 70s. In fact streetracing was around as early as the 50s. So how do you explain that?

Don't blame the video game.
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And don't mix up CAUSE with EFFECT:

It seems just as likely (if not more likely) that an 18 year old reckless driver likes racing video games because he likes racing - not the other way around.

Here's an analogy. I have a pet Border Collie. In my house there's a book on Border Collies. Now, did that book MAKE me get a pet? Hell no! I always liked that breed of dog. I got the book BECAUSE I like Border Collies ... not the other way around.

If you're old enough you'll remember a time in the news when Dungeons and Dragons was being shown in the news media to turn our children into cultists ... I believe there was one boy who killed a cat with some friends -and he had a copy of D&D in his house. What conclusions are you going to draw from that? The kid had mental problems for sure ... but D&D is not the cause. It sounds silly nowadays but people were serious about it back then.

Around the same time the popular topic in the news was how coin-op video games were causing "brain damage." The news showed clips of kids playing video games and described the look on their faces as "hypnosis" or "zombielike" - I'm dead serious - this was national news! The look on their faces was called, "concentration." That's all.