I am a case worker, who specializes in the messed up youth in foster care. I see all sorts of messed up kids, but one thing I've realized is that videogames are the ultimate anti drug. This revelation occurred to me while I was working with a particularly high risk kid who already had a criminal record, and had been bounced around from home to home. When I took up his case again, I began talking to him about life in general, and the conversation gradually turned to videogames. He told me he'd been playing a lot of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Now, one of the older generation of social workers would get on his case for this, and ask that the foster parents take this game away. I didn't, I just talked to him about it. He told me about how he likes it because it's a game he can connect with and vent his anger on. He told me that if he didn't game, he'd be getting into a lot worse stuff. He told me that ever since he got out of jail, videogames had saved him. He can kill as many people as he wants on GTA, and he knows he can go play that when he's angry, and it stops him from resorting to physical violence. He just plays his games, and he's cool again. To him, it's anger therapy, it's a drug, it's more effective than all the medications they've put him on.

From Doom to GTA, games have been demonized thanks to events like Columbine and idiots like Jack Thompson, but in the end, videogames have always had a benign, if not even helpful effect on youth. I can remember growing up in the Columbine generation, constantly having to listen to people demonizing videogames, but gasp: For a kid who grew up playing Doom, I have yet to participate in any satanic rituals, murder any small animals, and I even graduated high school without shooting up the school!* Games are not to blame for the violence and problems of this generation, and despite the idiocy of parents and the like, they have continued being played, giving youth a chance to vent their rage in a socially acceptable fashion.

All this isn't to say gaming is perfect. I've seen domestic violence erupt over who gets to play computer games next. I've witnessed a kid that puts the angry German kid to shame. I've even been physically assaulted by a psychotic pokemon kid. But I've also been able to calm down a kid who was really dangerous with videogames. I've been able to connect with really difficult youth by discussing gaming. I've been able to stabilize and bond with youth thanks to gaming. It's a real mixed blessing, but in the end, I don't think it deserves a shred of the demonization it receives from the media. Hell, with gaming and my clients, it's just an activity. It's something that keeps kids occupied in a harmless fashion. If a kid is calmed down because of a game, that's not the game's doing, it's the kid choosing to calm him down over a videogame. If a kid hits his older sister because she won't let him play computer games, that isn't the game's fault, it's the kid's fault. The media demonizes videogames for human choices.

If games are so horrible and violent, then explain PAX. Explain thousands and thousands of gamers coexisting, being social, gaming, and all around getting along in a really cool fashion. These aren't basement dwelling nerds either. And that's the reality- the Doom generation has grown up, and the GTA generation is growing up. I'm not worried about either generation- not really. If anything, I'm worried about the world that's been left to them by the previous generations. Gaming should be the least of parents worries, with the type of world they're leaving their kids.

But thankfully, gaming isn't going away. Instead, it's going mainstream. And all the issues I'm seeing with gaming are slipping away as more and more, parents are learning to game with their kids, and finding it to be a bonding experience. More and more of the older generation are getting into gaming, ranging from my 50 year old dad playing Ace Combat to the old lady on the bus talking about how much fun she has playing the Wii. Hopefully people will realize that it is just an activity, and it should be left at that.

*I did see a gun in school, but the guy who was holding it probably wasn't a gamer. There was also a shooting at my school, totally unrelated to gaming.