The good news is that videogaming helps your eyes, but the bad news is that it hurts your hands. "Author/researcer" Mike Tomich, whose web site looks like it was designed by a crazy old man, managed to land a segment on a local NBC affiliate in Illinois back in 2007. Yet Eurogamer thinks it's newsworthy when a site called http://gonintendo.com/?p=77268digs up the YouTube video. Slow news day, fellas?

So let's see what's going on here. The segment is your typical alarmist puff piece. "Some researchers say videogames are hazardous to children's health," says the anchor leading in to the story, which eventually segues to Mr. Tomich and some poor 15-year-old girl insecure about her hands. But the NBC affiliate did its research by also talking on the phone to a rheumatologist, who happens to also appear on Mr. Tomich's crazy web site. The site was apparently built around pushing a bill sponsored by Senator Joseph Lieberman to allocate money to study the effects of videogaming on children. The bill seems to have died on the vine. Big surprise there.

Note that Mr. Tomich also blamed coloring books:

Don't let children color, play video games, use computers until their bones are calcified hard enough to withstand the repetitive forces without developing deformities.

But the good and more current news is that kids with twisted claws for hands will have excellent vision! According to a study published in Nature Neuroscience (in 2008, no less!), 22 students at the University of Rochester showed improved eyesight after 50 hours of playing hardcore action games. They were better able to discern shades of gray, something that was previously regarded as a fixed ability with no capacity for improvement. But that was before Call of Duty 4 came along. The Washington Post quotes researcher Daphne Bavelier:

Video games train the brain to process the existing visual information more efficiently, and the improvements last for months after the game play stopped. These games push the human visual system to the limits, and the brain adapts to it.

The Lasik surgery industry declined to comment.