Does Violent Media Affect Children?

The New York Time's Motherlode has a column here arguing that violent media really does make children more violent:

In TV and movies, children stand outside of the characters and just see what they do and say.  When reading, they are (because of a narrator) inside the mind and feelings of at least one of the characters, and so learn to feel empathy.

For all kinds of reasons children are better off reading, but learning to understand how others are feeling is one of the more important ones.