One of the most remarkable phenomena in video gaming is the sharp rise in injuries due to playing.
Most of these are due to the Nintendo Wii, which requires physical movement to create movement on the screen.
Many of the motions that the Wii asks of a player can lead to pulled muscles, swollen joints, and trauma from getting smacked by a flying controller.
The movements can be quite jerky, and thus lead to injury even amongst the very young.
It would be easy to see this as a bad thing; after all, no parent wants to see their child get hurt.
But before the advent of this type of gaming, playing video games was a terribly sedentary activity, which leads to its own kind of risk.
Many parents hailed the Wii as a revolutionary tool in getting their lazy and unfit children off of the couch and at least doing something, even if it was still playing a game.
This reaction is understandable, given the decline in children's physical levels of activity over the last two decades.
But the fact that a video game is being hailed as a turning point in children's health is an indicator of just how badly we have fallen as a society that used to see running and jumping as not only a privilege, but a right of childhood.
Children of my generation and the generation after did not have access to video games; they had not been invented yet.
Television was in its infancy, and had not yet taken over the public psyche as it has now.
Our mothers rarely sat us in front of the TV to 'babysit', as is common practice now.
Instead, we played.
Usually outside, but, if the weather was particularly bad, indoors as well.
The games we played were often rough housing, hiding, running, jumping, throwing things, swinging things; all the kinds of activities that parents try to avoid these days.
Yes, there were injuries.
Lots of them.
But there was also actual physical development.
Muscles grew, coordination improved.
And our young lungs and heart benefited greatly from being used to capacity.
Contrast that to today when we consider a video game that at least makes kids stand up as 'revolutionary'.
Where will this steady increase in sedentary lives lead us? Most jobs today involve hours and hours of sitting, often as I am now; in front of a computer screen.
And after a day of working in front of a screen on a desk, most of us go home to an evening in front of another screen to 'relax' after the hard day we had.
I've played Wii games with my grandchildren and they are a lot of fun...
for a video game.
But the best times we've had have been running around in the yard, playing catch, or best of all, getting out into the woods to do some walking and talking.
Those are the moments when we are the closest.
Skinned knees and strained muscles are sometimes the price we pay for those moments, but they are worth it.
Are Wii injuries worth the fun that is gotten out of the games? To children who don't know of any other ways to have fun, probably.
For those of us who remember our own rambunctious childhoods, they seem a pale imitation of what once was.