I think videogames are amazing. Especially for small children.

I was not allowed to play many "videogames" as a child and I was never allowed a consol until the wii because then I could move around. Not because of violence but because of childhood obesity. (I was a skinny kid but that might have had something to do with my mother being very health counsious - she's a nutritionist)

But I was allowed educational/semi-educational/not-at-all-educational computer games. Sweden had a wonderful industry of Swedish children's games back in the day. My parents who are born in the 60's REALLY got in to a few of them and some of them and they would play with me. If I have children I think I will try to play with my kid on the computer but also let them play games suitable for their age by themselves. I would limit the time on the computer so they would go and play outdoors/move around but I think videogames are good for a developing brain.

I was a smart kid and I think videogames helped that since the educational ones allowed me to learn things on my own at my own pace and didn't require an adult to have constant patience with me.

On the violence aspect - I oppose the way videogames portray violence to - but I don't really play those kind of games - I think borderlands is the most violent one I own. There are many games that aren't very violent though - mario, zelda, many other borderline kids games... I play a lot of children's games actually - I own Animal Crossing. I don't know if the potential of videogames is tragically misused at all - there are A LOT of games out there and a lot of them are violent but many are not. I have had many interesting experiences in just small flashgames.

Boardgames are fantastic, but I can't get anyone to play them with me (My family is 3 people and my friends are not interested) and if we are still talking about kids they do require a lot of participation from you as a parent. I don't think it's wrong to distract your kid with an Ipad sometimes because there are a lot of pussels and such that the kid can work on which is probably better for them than the parent being stressed and frustrated and trying to come up with something.

As a sidenote on boardgames - I think every daycare/after-school-day-care should have a pile of them. Mine did and it was fantastic since there are enough people to play the interesting ones.

I don't know about bad impact on adults - all of media has an impact and while videogames are interactive I think we would still be encouraging the same unaccepteble behavior even if all videogames were perfect. I have had bad experiences with the guys who play tons of videogames and treating me - a girl - as an actual person. But I think the other guys played the same games - it just wasn't their main hobby.