Videogames, boys & 'muscularity'

The University of Illinois released an unusual study about youth and videogames. Researchers there “discovered exposure to video gaming magazines has a stronger influence on pre-adolescent boys' drive for muscularity, or desire for muscle mass, than does exposure to magazines depicting a more realistic muscular male-body ideal,” United Press International reports. It’s the extreme muscularity depicted in videogame mags’ that seems to have such appeal – interestingly, for Caucasian not African-American boys. Self-image doesn’t seem to come into play – the results were the same for all body types.