Video games are good. Video games are bad. Two separate studies show how video games can influence your children in vastly different ways.

First the bad. Despite claims to the opposite by the industry, an Iowa State University study claims to have proven "conclusively that violent video game play makes more aggressive kids". Published this month, the meta-analysis of 130 research reports on 130,000 subjects worldwide said the effect of playing violent video games was more aggressive, less caring children - regardless of age, sex or culture.

The study was published in the March 2010 issue of the Psychological Bulletin, an American Psychological Association journal. The university's Distinguished Professor of Psychology Craig Anderson reports that exposure to violent video games is a causal risk factor for increased aggressive thoughts and behaviour, and decreased empathy and prosocial behaviour in youths.

"We can now say with utmost confidence that regardless of research method - that is experimental, correlational, or longitudinal - and regardless of the cultures tested in this study (East and West), you get the same effects," said Anderson.

Meta analysis are considered one of the gold standards of research as it takes a broad overview of many different studies in the same area. Anderson hedges his analysis by saying the effects are not major, but they are still significant.

"These are not huge effects - not on the order of joining a gang vs. not joining a gang," said Anderson. "But these effects are also not trivial in size. It is one risk factor for future aggression and other sort of negative outcomes. And it's a risk factor that's easy for an individual parent to deal with - at least, easier than changing most other known risk factors for aggression and violence, such as poverty or one's genetic structure."

That conclusion seems a reasonable one to me, but will probably be hard for parent to implement given the huge peer pressure among youngsters to go out and blast aliens on a screen.

Now for the good. In February, James Gee, the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Chair in Literacy Studies in the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education at Arizona State University, gave a lecture which provided a preview of his new book Women as Gamers: The Sims and 21st Century Learning.

He said that if schools adopted some of the strategies that games use, they could educate children more effectively.

"Commercial video games, the ones that make a lot of money, are nothing but problem-solving spaces," Gee said at a learning symposium, as reported by the university. Gee says that video games optimize learning in several ways. First, games provide information when it is needed, rather than all at once in the beginning. They also provide an environment that he calls "pleasantly frustrating". They are challenging but doable. They can also be modified by the players. Developers often share the software and encourage players to create new levels or scenarios.

That educators can learn from the gaming industry is partly incorporated in a campaign by the Macarthur Foundation and several technology companies. They have launched a competition to develop video games for teaching science and math. The Foundation launched a five-year, $50 million digital media and learning programme in 2006 to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn. Teachers, check it out at http://digitallearning.macfound.org

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I cannot believe the stupid blindness of corporations toward their customers. Over the last week I have been battling a pop-up on my laptop, which keeps asking me to choose between six common browsers and to download one. The pop-up appears whenever I started my laptop. No explanation was given as the why I needed to choose a browser. I already have a browser! Why do I need to choose a new one and download one?

Believing the laptop was infected with a virus, since this is one way for hackers to get you to download one, I kept closing it and thought I would have to spend some time de-infesting the machine.

Now I have discovered the unasked pop-up was Microsoft's clumsy and intrusive way of complying with an order by the EU to provide European users with a choice of rival browsers as a means of avoiding a pending antitrust case against the dominant company.

Microsoft's response has been to prove that it can control our computers. If you reset your computer's location for a European location you will see what I mean. Firstly, the pop up is launched even if I have not launched my browser. Secondly, there is no explanation of why it pops up. Thirdly, there is no way of stopping it from appearing unless the user complies and chooses an option.

The question is: What else can Microsoft launch on my computer without my consent? This bad marketing has revealed how exposed we all are to invasions of privacy, even from legitimate companies.

There are some who may say I am a bit overboard on this. The browser pop-up is triggered by an update to Windows. I say, this is just a small sign of the things individuals within corporations think they can get away with.

Anti-virus companies have noted that the popup could also be a way in for virus spreaders to get people to download malicious software. It's a mess.

Send any comments to elamin.ahmed@gmail.com