A group of Senators including Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) has initiated efforts to conduct a Center for Disease Control and Prevention study that would examine “the effects of viewing and using electronic media, including television, computers, video games and the Internet on children’s cognitive, social, physical, and psychological development.” The Children Media Research and Advancement Act has passed a Senate committee and now heads to the full Senate for consideration. “America is a media-rich society, but despite the flood of information, we still lack critical information,” Sen. Lieberman said, in a statement. “The questions about the effects — positive or negative — of media on our children’s health, education and development are too important to go unasked and unanswered.” A string of recent court decisions have struck down states’ legislative attempts to regulate the sale of violent video games to minors, on the grounds that they are unconstitutional restrictions on free speech — often stating that no solid data exists to prove a correlation between exposure to media violence and violent behavior. Lieberman and Clinton introduced similar legislation that would regulate video game sales at the federal level last year.

Read More: http://lieberman.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=252365 http://tinyurl.com/fyuce (CNET)