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# Grand Theft Childhood

grand theft childhood? A groundbreaking Harvard study questions the hype and assumptions  about the effects of video games on our kids.

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- [Hello world!](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/2022/02/25/hello-world/) - Welcome to User's blog Sites. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!

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- [Home](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/)
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- [Excerpts](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/excerpts/) - ARE GIRLS MISSING OUT? JANUARY 28, 2010 RESEARCH SUGGESTS THAT ON AVERAGE, BOYS HAVE AN EDGE OVER GIRLS IN SEVERAL TYPES OF COGNITIVE SKILLS, SUCH AS IMAGINING HOW THREE-DIMENSIONAL OBJECTS WOULD LOOK FROM VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES, AND CALCULATING THE TRAJECTORY OF AN OBJECT (SUCH AS A BULLET OR A FOOTBALL) TOWARD A MOVING TARGET.
- [WHAT SHOULD PARENTS DO?](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/excerpts/what-should-parents-do/) - The first step is to reframe the often-asked question, “How do I protect my child from violent video games?” to “How do I help my child make the most of time spent playing video games?” It’s not boxing, it’s aikido. You don’t want either to meet force with force or to abdicate control. Instead, you
- [VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES  AND FRIENDSHIPS](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/excerpts/violent-video-games-and-friendships/) - "We absolutely had no video games in our house,” said Wendy in a parents’ focus group. “We had a ’no video games‘ rule for years. When my son was in 4th grade, we finally broke down and got a video game system, because he kept coming home from school saying, 'I’m completely out of the conversation.
- [VIDEO GAMES AND   LEARNING DISABILITIES](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/excerpts/video-games-and-learning-disabilities/) - Our survey of 1,254 middle-schoolers included 78 students with mild learning disabilities who could fill out the survey with extra time or assistance from staff (while still keeping their answers private). As a group, these kids tended to play games for more hours per week than others. They were more likely than other children to play games
- [ARE VIDEO GAMES ADDICTIVE?](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/excerpts/are-video-games-addictive/) - Richard Falzone, M.D., is a child and adolescent psychiatrist in suburban Boston who specializes in treating teenagers who have substance abuse problems. Most of the time, they use alcohol or street drugs. Some abuse prescription drugs. A growing number, he says, act as if they’re addicted to video games. “I’m seeing a 15-year-old
- [VICE CITY IN 1872](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/excerpts/vice-city-in-1872/) - Enter Anthony Comstock, the Chief Special Agent for the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Comstock was a media darling of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His crusades against pornography, alcohol, tobacco, birth control and abortion made headlines for more than 30 years. In 1872, Comstock accompanied a police captain and a
- [THE VIDEO GAMES AND  VIOLENCE STUDY](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/excerpts/the-video-games-and-violence-study/) - In 2004, we began a two-year, $1.5-million multifaceted study of violent video games and children at the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media, a division of the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. The U.S. Department of Justice (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention) funded the research. Our researchers
- [SENATE HEARINGS: ARE BATMAN AND ROBIN GAY?](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/excerpts/senate-hearings-are-batman-and-robin-gay/) - Cultural historians consider the late 1930s through the 1950s to be the golden age of comic books. Characters introduced in that era, such as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the Crypt Keeper, are still cultural icons and have been reinvented for other media and new generations of children. In 1953-54, more than 75 million
- [RACIST GAMES](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/excerpts/racist-games/) - Today there are a lot of games—many of them available for free—that make no bones about spewing racist, sexist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic beliefs, often wrapped in attempts at humor. Many are quite simple. In The Suicide Bombing Game, players use a computer mouse to direct an Arab suicide bomber along a city street, timing the explosion
- [MEDIA THAT REALLY  FRIGHTEN TEENAGERS](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/excerpts/media-that-really-frighten-teenagers/) - Marcy told the other parents in her focus group that her concerns went well beyond the contents and immediate effects of violent video games. “I think it also creates for children—and they may not admit it—a real sense of terror, an underlying sense that life is just violent; that awful things happen all the time
- [CONCERNS ABOUT SEX](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/excerpts/concerns-about-sex/) - Along with swearing, the other issue that struck close to home with the young teens and preteens in our focus groups was sex—but quite differently from the way that many parents expected or feared. The children's normal adolescent awkwardness and concerns came out in the way they responded to the sexual content of some of
- [CAN VIDEO GAMES  TRAIN SNIPERS?](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/excerpts/can-video-games-train-snipers/) - “Fourteen-year-old Michael Carneal steals a gun from a neighbor’s house, brings it to school, and fires eight shots into a student prayer meeting that is breaking up. Prior to stealing the gun, he had never shot a real handgun in his life. The FBI says that the average experienced law enforcement officer, in the average
- [ARE GIRLS MISSING OUT?](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/excerpts/are-girls-missing-out/) - Research suggests that on average, boys have an edge over girls in several types of cognitive skills, such as imagining how three-dimensional objects would look from various perspectives, and calculating the trajectory of an object (such as a bullet or a football) toward a moving target. This makes it easier for boys to immerse themselves in
- [Research Papers](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/research-papers/) - Publications based on our research (funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice) new Olson CK. Are electronic games health hazards or health promoters? In: Kowert R, Quandt T, eds. The Video Game Debate: Unraveling the Physical, Social and Psychological Effects of Digital Games. New York: Routledge; 2016 Olson,
- [Myths](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/myths/) - MYTH: The growth in violent video game sales is linked to the growth in youth violence — especially school violence — throughout the country. FACT: Video game popularity and real-world youth violence have been moving in opposite directions. Violent juvenile crime in the United States reached a peak in 1993 and has been declining since. Between 1994
- [Speeches](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/speeches/) - We have extensive experience both nationally and internationally providing speeches, workshops, and consulting to parents, educators, professionals, and industry. This includes the development and delivery of educational and outreach programs to a wide range of audiences. For more information, please contact Dr. Cheryl Olson. Sample presentations 2nd International Congress of Technology Addiction, keynote address, Istanbul, Turkey, 27
- [Summary](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/summary/) - Grand Theft Childhood is based on research done at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Cheryl K. Olson, Sc.D. was the study’s Principal Investigator. Our work was funded by a $1.5 million grant to the Center for Mental Health and Media (a division of the MGH psychiatry department) from the Office of Juvenile Justice and
- [Reviews](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/reviews/) - SAMPLE REVIEWS: “The book is one of those rare phenomena: a scientific, psychological and sociological study that manages to be relevant to a hot-button topic today without being dead-dull and bogged down in all manner of technical jargon or medical terminology…. This makes for a very calm and even-handed approach to a subject
- [For Parents](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/for-parents/) - With game consoles and computers now part of everyday life, millions of parents are deciding whether to give in to children’s pleas to buy particular games, and are worried about how to set limits. The facts and reassurance found in Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do (Simon & Schuster) may be just what parents are looking for. The book’s common-sense advice
- [Authors](https://grandtheftchildhood.com/authors/) - Cheryl Olson is a public health and education researcher and practitioner. She’s a former teen issues columnist for Parents magazine, and (while at Harvard) was the Principal Investigator of the first federally funded, large-scale research project to take an in-depth look at the effects of electronic games on preteens and teenagers. She has served as a health

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