"Parents of video-gaming children, take heart: Your kid is not destined to become an anti-social hermit who lives at home until he’s 35. In fact, a new study shows that all that game time could actually be making him a better citizen. No, this isn’t a study funded by the video-game association. It’s from the respectable folks at the Pew Internet & American Life Project."

A recent study examined the relationship between gaming and "civic experiences" among teenagers. What is a civic experience? Essentially anything which involves engaging in public life. Thing is, what they found is virtual public life is still public life. And this is what I dig about it: it's proof video games are not as limited as we might like to think sometimes, and that we've come a long way with them.

For example, the source article cites games like SimCity achieving progress by letting gamers taking part in the experience of building and maintaining a community. Furthermore, helping fledgling players become established simulates the experience of volunteering. And think about the online component: I've long seen the Internet as a virtual representation of the collective unconscious, so you get everything here. And this stretches to online gaming, where things like sexism, racism and malice are fairly commonplace. Viewing and participating in these things is a civic experience, to be sure, and a largely unrestrained one. What else could you ask for? Oh, direct political involvement? Here you are.

The final point made is most gamers don't just play violent video games, but most of us knew that anyway.

Beyond entertainment, what do you get from gaming?