hollombe@ttidcc.UUCP (The Polymath) (11/07/85)
6 November 1985 60 Minutes 524 W. 57th Street New York, NY 10019 Dear 60 Minutes, I'm writing in regard of the segment you did on Dungeons and Dragons and related teenage suicides. I regret that I didn't personally watch the segment, ironically because I was playing Dungeons and Dragons at the time it aired. I read about it on a world-wide computer network and got the impression your presentation raised serious questions about the safety of allowing teenagers to play these games. The figures I saw quoted as yours were 28 suicides out of approximately 3 million teenage players over a 5 year period. It occurred to me to investigate the national teenage suicide rates and compare them with your figures. I first contacted the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center and obtained annual suicide figures for Los Angeles County. The figures for 1980 were 1,088 total suicides of which 64 were teenagers. A call to a demographer told me that teenagers constituted approximately 19% of the Los Angeles County population at that time. The Los Angeles County Regional Planning Department told me the population of the county in 1980 was 7,477,421. At this point I got out a calculator and worked out that your figures yield an annual suicide rate of .19 per hundred thousand for teenage Dungeons and Dragons players. The Los Angeles figures yield an annual rate of 4.5 per hundred thousand. In other words teenagers who play Dungeons and Dragons are _less_ likely to commit suicide than the average Los Angeles teenager by a ratio of nearly 24 to 1. Not satisfied with local figures, I next looked up the national suicide statistics in the _Statistical Abstract of the United States -- 1985_ published by the Bureau of the Census. The figures there revealed that, if anything, the 24 to 1 ratio is rather conservative and, for some age ranges, may actually run to triple digits. Since you presumably employ a professional research staff I'm surprised they didn't think to check these figures that are so readily available. I invite you to check them out for yourselves. After you've done so, I hope you'll agree you owe Dungeons and Dragons and the fantasy gaming community a public apology. I've published this letter on the same computer network on which I read about your original broadcast. The fantasy gaming community awaits your response. Sincerely, Jerry Hollombe P.O. Box 5921 Santa Monica, CA 90405-0921 cc: usenet net.games.frp net.kids net.suicide