Columbine and computer addiction Part II

I’ve posted about Dr. Jerald Block before. He’s a psychiatrist from the Oregon Health & Science University who theorizes that the cowardly scumbags Harris and Klebold went on their rampage because they were both denied access to their computers in the days prior to their attack. While I don’t agree 100% with Dr. Block’s theory I do think that is does have a lot of merit and may have been the breaking point.

However I’m not here to talk about Dr. Block’s work. I’m here to talk about what in my opinion is lazy journalism.

In this article from UPI they editorialize while paraphrasing Dr. Block…

Prior to the shootings, both teens spent a significant amount of time playing first-person-shooter computer games. Block suggests that these virtual worlds became essential for the teens and that Harris and Klebold may have been unable to distinguish the boundaries between their virtual lives and their real lives — in effect mixing the two.

That seems to imply that Dr. Block thinks that games like Doom were the main cause behind Columbine.

However in this article by WebMD, who Dr. Block actually spoke to, he says no such thing.

Before the attack, shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold spent “more and more time with their computers, to the point that they may have been unable to distinguish the boundaries between their virtual lives and their real lives,” says Oregon Health & Science University psychiatrist Jerald Block, MD.

“Then, as they got into trouble with school authorities, limits were put on their use of the computer. This made them react with homicidal rage and suicidal depression,” he tells WebMD.

Does that sound like Dr. Block is blaming video games? Not to me. Personally it doesn’t even sound like he’s blaming computers or the internet.

He is basically giving a warning to parents to not let their kids immerse themselves wholly into any of these things. Yet the UPI article never mentions that at all.

There’s nothing wrong with editorializing, that’s what I’m doing right now. Editorializing in what’s supposed to be an informative article is just bad journalism.