CAN VIDEO GAMES LEAD TO HEART DISEASE?

• Position: Study of boys and violence in video games - Brief Article

Teenage boys who play violent video games may face a greater risk of developing heart disease later in life, according to research conducted by Paul Lynch, a first-year student in the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, Oklahoma City. While other studies of violent video games have focused on how they affect behavior, Lynch is one of the first investigators to examine the physiological consequences of the games. He is particularly concerned about the long-term health effects of such games on aggressive young males who spend hours every day slaughtering video people.

Lynch began investigating the effects of violent video games when he was 14. His first subject was his seven-year-old brother. "He was an even-tempered kid and never got upset or got into fights at school, but when he played violent video games, he got red in the face and sometimes even kicked the television."

Lynch borrowed a stethoscope from his mother, a nurse, and discovered that his brother's heart rate rose as much as 40% while playing the violent games. Intrigued, he started studying his classmates to see if they exhibited a similar response. Eventually, he turned most of the 100-plus students in his rural Indiana high school into subjects, comparing their resting heart rate with their heart rate following a session of video massacre. These early studies showed that boys were considerably more affected by violent video games than girls.

Studies have shown that the average U.S. teenage boy spends at least an hour and a half each day...