Report: Video Game Violence is (Almost) The New Second-Hand Smoke

Good news! Playing violent video games isn't as bad for you as smoking! But only, you know, just barely--that is, if a new study by the University of Michigan's L. Rowell Huesmann and Brad Bushman is to be believed.

Huesmann issued a release regarding his findings, stating, in part, "[e]xposure to violent electronic media has a larger effect than all but one other well known threat to public health. The only effect slightly larger than the effect of media violence on aggression is that of cigarette smoking on lung cancer."

He continued, writing, "The research clearly shows that exposure to virtual violence increases the risk that both children and adults will behave aggressively." There was no actual mention of violence's potential for leaving a generation of youngsters bound in gaming-induced iron lungs, but it think it's implied, once you read between the lines a bit.

Huesmann added that kids are spending an average of three hours a day watching TV (call me cynical, but that number actually sounds a bit low to me) and that more than 60 percent of TV shows some kind of violence ("some kind?" Again, this number seems low). Forty percent of the total contains "extreme violence."

The results of the report, Huesmann said, are equal in both males and females.