"If we want to understand why young people become homicidal, we need to look beyond the games they play."

These days are very troubled times for gamers. On the one hand, we have the Wii bringing joy and innovation to gamers and the industry. On the other hand, videogame related violence seems to be reported in the news almost on a regular basis.

However, In a recent issue of the American Sociological Association's Context magazine, sociologist Karen Sternheimer put some heavy doubt into the theories that videogame violence directly result in real-world violence. Sternheimer claims that there is no such correlation, and that the reality might be exactly the opposite.

Sternheimer has stated that as videogame sales on the whole have risen (to roughly 10 billion dollars), juvenile homicide arrests have fallen to about 77%. According to Sternheimer, students now have a chance of less than 7 in 10 million of being killed by school-related violence.

In a very frank and forthright manner, Sternheimer stated, "If we want to understand why young people become homicidal, we need to look beyond the games they play."

According to Sternheimer, other issues need to be looked at, including poverty, domestic abuse, mental instability.

Sternheimer seemed to disagree with the analytical methods of a 2001 study which found that videogames did increase aggressive behavior, stating: "They don't offer much insight as to why a few isolated kids, and not the millions of others who play these games, decided to pick up real weapons and shoot real people."