Peter Jennings has an opinion.

Counter-Point

Although boys may be gaining all the benefits such as computer literacy or maybe increase hand to eye coordination and reflexes, they will also be feeling the brunt of possible negative side effects. Negative effects such as increased agression. Many reputable psychological sources have done research on this topic. We've always stereotyped boys as more agressive than girls. Is this widening the gap? Here are a few good pages to check out:

http://www.apa.org/releases/videogames.html

http://www.psychologymatters.org/videogames.html

Now aside from the role of video games in socialzing our children and the fear that their racey content may infuelnce their development there are other concerns. Since video games are geared mostly towards boys, do then boys reap the benefits of this by being socialized towards computer literacy. That is at least the assertion made by this article:

http://fubini.swarthmore.edu/~WS30/WS30F2000/compvideo.html

This source is a little older and cites information mostly from the 90's but t brings up an interesting point of both economic significance and important social significance; targeting the female market in video games. Doing so can not only be profitable but also it is argued that it can help bridge the technology gap between the genders.

The down low

When it comes to gender and video games there are a lot of people who feel that women are getting short changed, in more ways than one. There is an assertion that video games, both computer games and console gaming, are predominantly designed for males. Because of that, young males who are playing these games are being socialized by the gender values present in these games. Typically, anyone who plays video games can tell you this, women are either portrayed as weak figures in need of rescuing and protecting or they are sexualized and objectified. Ussually I feel that most of the complaints and "concerns" of watch dog sites and networks can be a little alarmist, but this sight does a pretty good job of summing up one of the problems at hand:

http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/parents/video_games/concerns/gender_videogames.cfm

So without any discussion or editing here is my proposal for the final project:

Video games as of late are becoming increasingly more popular in our culture. I believe, whether for better or worse, that everything in our culture has a psychological and sociological effect on us. Video games tend to be played more often by boys than girls and, arguably, because of this are more geared towards boys in their themes and plot. What sociological, psychological and cultural effects could this have on our society?