Video Games and Bullying

I have very mixed emotions about video games regarding their effect on bullying. I do believe that video games have a direct affect on the attitudes, attention span, and social abilities of children. But I'm not sure how well you can directly connect video games to bullying. I believe it would have to be a process of a couple of steps. In short, I don't think kids learn bullying from video games, but I do believe that children can become more violent in action and attitude, allowing them to have the potential to become more like the common bully. For example, my brother used to play a ton of video games, and just like everything that you take in has an affect on your life and your actions, his actions directly related to his video game playing. He began to drift away from his friends, and even drift away from his family. In the peak of his video game addiction, he lost a lot of sleep because he stayed up all night playing games, which in turn made him very cranky and very mean. So it was not the shooting game that directly made him more violent, but rather it was the attitude change from playing video games that caused the harshness in his attitude. I also think that bullying can be a second hand effect from video games. Saying that, the person that plays the video games does not become the bully, but rather the person that plays excessive amounts of video games, and therefore pulls himself away from being able to socially interact with real people face to face, rather than avatars over a microphone, causes him/her to be bullied by other people. I'm not the biggest fan of video games, and I could probably go on and on about how video games change the social ability level of children from a very young age, but I will hold off as it could easily become a very angry rant. BUT in conclusion, I do believe that video games in excessive amount and not played moderately can cause drastic changes in a person's attitude and social abilities, as I've seen it happen with many people.