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May 08, 2008, 01:35 PM ET
Research on Connections Between Computer Use and School Violence
A psychiatrist presented research on connections between excessive computer use and school shootings at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual summit on Tuesday.
Dr. Jerald J. Block, a psychiatrist and professor at Oregon Health & Science University, argued that the shooters in the Columbine High School massacre “spent a significant amount of time playing first-person-shooter computer games and creating game levels for others to use,” and that they became “unable to distinguish the boundaries between their virtual lives and their real lives, in effect mixing the two,” according to a news release. His research was published last year in an article for the American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry titled “Lessons From Columbine: Virtual and Real Rage.”
“[A]s they got into trouble with school authorities, limits were put on their use of the computer. This made them react with homicidal rage and suicidal depression,” Dr. Block told WebMD of the Columbine shooters.
Dr. Block has also studied student violence at Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University, and other institutions.
Other scholars have criticized connections between violence and computer or video game use and theories relating to “Internet addiction.”—Catherine Rampell
Categories: Research, Student-Life
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