[BHS etree] EVENT: Panel Discussion: the surprising truths about violent video games.

[bhs at idiom.com]

Do not reply to etree, contact Jason Marsh mailto:jhmarsh at berkeley.edu

Grand Theft Childhood? A Greater Good magazine panel on the surprising
truths about violent video games.

When: Tuesday, May 6th, 6-7:30 pm. Reception with light refreshments
beforehand, from 5:30-6.

Where: North Gate Library, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, on
the northern edge of the UC Berkeley campus. North Gate is a brown shingle
building on the southeast corner of the intersection of Hearst and Euclid
Avenues. For map, additional directions, and information on parking, see
http://journalism.berkeley.edu/etc/directions.html

Tickets: This is a free event.

The new issue of Greater Good magazine features a series of essays about
play. Contributors to the issue reveal that free, spontaneous, imaginative
play is essential to positive growth and development--and yet kids today
are doing less and less of it.

At the same time, however, kids are playing more and more video games:
Studies say that 70 to 80 percent of boys and roughly 20 percent of girls
play video games on a typical day.

The popularity of video games--and the bloody, pyrotechnic action of some
games--have fueled a wide range of fears. Are those fears justified?

To celebrate the release of its new issue on play, Greater Good magazine
is hosting a panel discussion that will reveal the newest facts about
video game play, and what guidelines they suggest for parents, teachers,
kids, and the people who create video games.

The panel will feature Harvard Medical School psychologist Lawrence
Kutner, whose new book Grand Theft Childhood? reports the results of his
landmark study on the effects of video games on teenagers. Kutner's
presentation will be followed by questions and responses from a panel of
experts in child psychology and video game development. The discussion
will be moderated by Jeremy Adam Smith, senior editor of Greater Good
magazine and author of Twenty-First-Century Dad, forthcoming from Beacon
Press.

Panelists: Lawrence Kutner, Ph.D., is co-founder and director of the
Center for Mental Health and Media, based in the Department of Psychiatry
at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and is on the psychiatry
faculty at Harvard Medical School. His new book, Grand Theft Childhood?,
written with Center for Mental Health and Media co-director Cheryl K.
Olson, is based on the results of a $1.5 million study funded by the U.S.
Department of Justice on the effects of video games on young teenagers.
Kutner is also the author of five previous books about child psychology
and parent-child communication. He wrote the award-winning weekly New York
Times "Parent & Child" column, was the "Ask the Expert" columnist for
Parents magazine, and has been a columnist and contributing editor at
Parenting and Baby Talk magazines. He's a licensed psychologist and a
Fellow of the American Psychological Association, which awarded him its
National Psychology Award for the best newspaper writing about psychology
in the United States.

Event presented by: The UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center, the
Harold E. Jones Child Study Center, and the Graduate School of Journalism
Felker Magazine Program

For more information about Greater Good, please see  www.greatergoodmag.org