A story by the UK's Daily Mail newspaper and the BBC that tapped an expert claiming that games were turning children who played them in to the wee hours of the night in to zombies has been debunked. The expert cited in the story says that the quotes attributed to him were completely fabricated.

The Daily Mail and BBC reports quoted Robert Hart-Fletcher of charity Kids and Media. According to the reports he said:

On February 2 a virtual army will descend on the United Nations headquarters to protest against bullying. The protest will be virtual - in other words, no one is actually going to the real headquarters of the UN in New York. The protest is being put together by the U.K. not-for-profit group Beatbullying.org and will take place online February 2 using cute and adorable avatars.

A new report from the Swedish Media Council comes to the conclusion that, while violent games may make the children that play them more aggressive, there's no conclusive evidence that "the games themselves cause kids' aggressive behavior." The Media Council is a Swedish government agency whose mission statement is to "reduce the risk of harmful media influences among minors and to empower minors as conscious media users."

New data from Pew Research Center finds that young adults are using the Internet as a distraction - a distinction television use to have among that particular age group. A majority of young American adults are using the Internet for "fun" and to "kill time," according to a new report by Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. But television isn't the only victim according to the data - video game console time is also being affected by Internet use, according to the data.

According to a press release issued this morning by the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), new research shows that violent video games alter the brain functions in young men. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to analyze the long-term effects of violent video game play on the brain, researchers found that changes in brain regions associated with cognitive function and emotional control in young adult men occur after one week of game play. The results of this study were presented at the annual meeting of the RSNA.

If there's one thing you can say about anti-game campaigner and UK Labour MP Keith Vaz, it's that he is tenacious in his fight against games. This week MP Vaz raised his fourth early day motion aimed at violent games, this time specifically targeting Activision's recently released Modern Warfare 3.

While those who don't know anything at all about video games are quick to use them as an excuse for many of society’s ills (crime, violence, obesity, attention deficit and a myriad of psychological disorders), now everyone thinks they are bad. In fact a growing number of academics see the value in video games as teaching aids. For example, a Yale professor is trying to use them to teach sex education.

Researchers at the Charité University Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy in Berlin, Germany, found that gamers who play "frequently" have greater left striatal gray matter volume compared with those that are considered to be moderate gamers. Researchers say that these findings show the importance of "striatal volume and activity in shaping preference of skills for video gaming."

The Huffington Post serves up a video of Dr. Lawrence Kutner discussing what he calls the myths about violent video games and his research on the links between video game violence and youth violence.

Kutner is nationally recognized clinical psychologist who trained at the Mayo Clinic and teaches at Harvard Medical school, where he's co-founder and co-director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media. He's also the president of Health Communication Consultants, Inc.

The 2012 Harris Poll Youth EquiTrend study by Harris interactive is making Nintendo very happy today. While game systems in general receive higher scores than other technologies surveyed in Harris Interactive's annual survey, Nintendo Wii earns the overall highest score among all technology brands included in the study.

New research from the University of Queensland suggests that playing violent video games leads to players seeing themselves and their opponents as "lacking core human qualities" such as warmth, open-mindedness, and intelligence. The research, conducted by Dr. Brock Bastian from UQ's School of Psychology, was recently published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

A new study conducted by academics from two German universities says that "aggressive children" ages 8 - 12 years-old have a preference for violent video games.

The bad economic climate in America has produced the lowest level of teen employment ever, and while some would be keen to blame distraction like video games as the cause, the truth is those jobs teens used to get are being taken by adults trying to make ends meet. A recent analysis from Federal Reserve found that, while kids are spending more time on college prep and summer classes, increasing competition from adults taking the low-paying jobs that teenagers used to do is becoming a common occurrence.

A new study published in the medical journal Pediatrics suggests that profanity in the media such as television and video games can cause aggressive behavior in middle school students. Researchers at Brigham Young University gathered information from 223 middle school students in the Midwest to come to the conclusion that profanity can lead to aggressive behavior.

Children in the United States between the ages of 2 and 17 are playing video games, according to a new study released by research firm NPD Group. According to the NPD's new study around 91 percent of kids between the ages of 2 and 17 (that's roughly 64 million people) are playing video games. That number represents a nine percent increase compared to data collected for 2009. NPD says that growth has been across the entire market, but the biggest gains come from children between the ages  2 and 5, up 17 percentage points since 2009.

The White House announced this afternoon that First Lady Michele Obama will speak at a press event on Monday, September 26 at 4:00 PM about the importance of supporting women and young ladies as they pursue vocations in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

Mike Langlois psychotherapist, educator, and proprietor of the excellent blog "Gamer Therapist," criticizes the prevailing attitude of mental health professionals that video game usage is a root cause of bad behavior in his new book, "Reset: Video Games & Psychotherapy." Langlois, a Teaching Associate in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, discusses the disdain for gamers and the video games they love that many therapists and mental health professionals have.

Dr. Maureen Becker, director of clinical education for the Willowbrook college’s Physical Therapy Doctoral Program, is using three New York City-area students (Rachel Pollack of Willowbrook, Emily Cochran of Grasmere and Shirley Coffey of Brooklyn) — to study the most effective ways in which young people can get a real-world workout with Nintendo's Wii Fit. The study began in June, and focuses mainly on tween girls, because, Dr. Becker says, girls tend to have a higher obesity rate than boys in the same age range.

Eidos life president Ian Livingstone has praised Google chairman Eric Schmidt for a recent speech about the state of education in the UK, calling it a "ringing endorsement" of the Livingstone-Hope video games skills review. In fact, says Livingstone, "It's as though he lifted his comments straight from Next Gen." - referring to the report he helped create.

UK culture minister Ed Vaizey was also apparently "delighted" that Schmidt's MacTaggart lecture echoed the key conclusions of the government-backed Next Gen report.

A new poll by Siena College has found that most New Yorkers think that technology has made life better, but admit that devices that provide constant information updates also add to their anxiety levels.

Oklahoma City police have arrested a 13-year-old boy in connection with the death of his nine-month-old baby sister after a questionable story of what happened to the child was told to the staff at a metro hospital. ER doctors became suspicious and called the local police. Officers were called to a metro hospital on August 16 after doctors noted that the baby's injuries were not consistent with an explanation given by the girl's parents.

Former Oasis front man and now solo artist Noel Gallagher says that video games and TV violence are to blame for the civil unrest in London.

"We live in this age of violence—and I don't care what other people say: Brutal TV and brutal videogames are a reason for this pointless violence as well," Gallagher is quoted as saying in Bang Showbiz. "The people are immune to violence, they are used to it. And if they get caught they aren't punished the right way. The prisons are already full? Then build new ones!"

A new book called "Video Gamers" by British Sociologist Garry Crawford hits book stores (both virtual and brick-and-mortar) this week. The book was published earlier this month by Routledge (London & New York) and is priced at £25.99.

According to a report from New Zealand’s TVNZ, a high school boy bought Ritalin to stay awake and play Xbox 360 games, but ended up in the hospital. The report claims that the boy was brought into the hospital "White as a sheet and hyperventilating" after he used a "makeshift device" to snort Ritalin he scored from a classmate. The 15-year-old told his father that he obtained the drug through a classmate and had been using it for quite some time.

A new study suggest that too much time on social networking sites such as Facebook or playing video games is bad for teens and often leads to a variety of medical issues such as stomach aches, sleeping issues, anxiety, and depression. The study was conducted by psychologist Larry Rosen at Cal State Dominguez Hill, who has been "studying the effects of technology on people for 25 years." The case study from Rosen was recently presented at the American Psychological Association’s annual convention in Washington, D.C.

Is using a Kinect martial-arts simulator like UFC Personal Trainer like practicing martial arts or like playing a videogame? The answer is neither, according to a guest editorial on Wired's Game|Life written by Paul Ballas, a Philadelphia-area child psychiatrist. Ballas's editorial, "UFC Trainer Is Helpfully Violent," comes to the conclusion that, while UFC Personal Trainer is based on a violent fighting franchise, it could also have positive effects on kids' health.

According to this VentureBeat report Taiwanese company Foxconn plans to eliminate some of its workforce with robotic workers. The company said that it will replace 1 million of its workers in China. In case you've forgotten Foxconn is the company that found itself under scrutiny when several of its employees committed suicide because of unacceptable working conditions.

A new study from Northwestern University, which analyzes previous studies on media use done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, has found that minority youths ages 8 - 18 years old consume an average of 13 hours of media content a day. This, researchers say, is about 4.5 hours more than white youth. Researchers found that minority youth spend one to two more hours a day than white youth watching TV and videos, an hour more listening to music, around 90 minutes more on computers, and as much as 30 - 40 minutes more playing video games.

TV consumption (including TiVo, DVDs and mobile and online viewing) totaled 5 hours and 54 minutes a day for African Americans, 5 hours and 21 minutes for Hispanics, 4 hours and 41 minutes for Asians and 3 hours 36 minutes for whites.

Australia is an interesting country. On the one hand it has struggled for years to get an adult level video games rating classification (R18+) and on the other it allows a game that has been censored in other countries to be released there with little or no controversy. The game in question is the 3DS tactical fighter Dead or Alive: Dimensions. Several countries have banned the game because it features sexualized depictions of children. The children are three teen characters named Ayane, Koroke and Kasumi who game makers describe as "under 18 years of age."

To be fair, the censoring has been done mostly by Nintendo, based on concerns about child pornography laws in Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark and Norway) that say it is illegal to show young girls as animated characters in a sexualized way. The concern is mostly with the game's photography mode, which allows players to look up characters' dresses when they are in certain poses.

Connected Tennessee’s Computers 4 Kids "Preparing Tennessee's Next Generation for Success" program awarded the Boys & Girls Clubs of Middle Tennessee with more than 150 brand new computers this week. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act-funded the project, which deploys computers, academic support programs, and workforce training to two at-risk, populations: those in the state's foster care system who are "aging out" as they turn 18, and youth who are active in the state’s 76 Boys & Girls Clubs. Over the next three years, the program hopes to impact the lives of nearly 60,000 youngsters across the state.

State Senator Bill Ketron, an enthusiastic supporter of the program since its launch a little over three years ago, said that the program's impact in Middle Tennessee is "significant."