With Hillary Clinton jumping on the GTA bandwagon and "calling for a $90-million study on the effects of video games on children," Steven Johnson has a reply in The LA Times. It includes, for example:
Consider this one fascinating trend among teenagers: They're spending less time watching professional sports and more time simulating those sports on Xbox or PlayStation. Now, which activity challenges the mind more — sitting around rooting for the Packers, or managing an entire football franchise through a season of "Madden 2005": calling plays, setting lineups, trading players and negotiating contracts? Which challenges the mind more — zoning out to the lives of fictional characters on a televised soap opera, or actively managing the lives of dozens of virtual characters in a game such as "The Sims"?
It is also, of course, a good plug for Johnson's book, Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter.
