Are computer games harmful?

According to UK neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield computer games can affect - and harm - the developing brain in children.

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SCIENCE: Can computer games harm children's brains? 

by Tim Cannon, News Weekly, November 10, 2009.

"As any parent will tell you, there is something intuitively troubling about the hold which computers exercise over the web-generation - those children who have never known a world without computers.

Left to their own devices, many children could quite happily spend their days glued to the computer screen. Indeed, it is not just children who find themselves in thrall to the ubiquitous digital portal - adults are also increasingly likely to while away the hours in front of a brightly lit screen, exploring a binary wonderland of communication, information and recreation.
For the most part, intuitive parental concern about the impact on children of computer usage has rested upon less-than-firm foundations: untested hypotheses and hunches that all is not well.
Enter neuroscientist and member of the UK's House of Lords, Baroness Susan Greenfield. A professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford, the baroness is a widely published expert on the neurological aspects of Alzheimer's disease. In the course of her work, Greenfield has recognised that her research may well have significant implications for understanding the impact of computer use on young brains.
In particular, Greenfield has noted the eminent plasticity of the human brain. Addressing the House of Lords in February this year, Greenfield explained that, from a neurological perspective, "every single moment, leaves its mark almost literally on your brain". Importantly, the impact of external stimuli on the brain is physical, such that the brain's architecture undergoes observable changes according to the stimuli it receives. . ."