Violent video games - do they have a negative impact on children & teenagers

Here's a link to an article by someone writing for the NY Times on the effect of violent and sexually explicit video games on children & teenagers. She argues that there is no proveable negative effect on people after playing video games and that the fact that it's 'pretend' makes it okay.

I post this just as an indication of what a lot of people in culture think about the issue. It seems to me that you can't expose yourself to a lot of violence and sexually explicit material without finding your thoughts becoming more, violent and well, sexually explicit. I say this from my own life experience of watching those sorts of things in films etc. I think Paul is probably addressing this in Romans 12:2.

Here's the Article 'It's perverse but it's also pretend'