Sorry, I put blames in the title. Force of habit. Have you played GTA? If not your family could be in serious danger. Take eleven-year-old Audrey Plique for example who saved her entire family’s life after their Jeep crashed and flipped over four times. The quick witted preteen crawled out the car’s back window and guided the rest of her family out of the car. How did she learn that she needed to do this in order to save their lives? From Grand Theft Auto of course.

“She just knew, from playing Grand Theft Auto. She saw on there that when a car rolls over, it can blow up. She knew that could happen to us,” Audrey’s mom, Karen Norris, said. The car didn’t actually blow up in the end but it could have, right?

The girl is obviously a hero for saving her family but crediting GTA as the reason she was so level headed and brave is a bit unbelievable. Despite the fact that this story makes gaming sound really great, to me it’s just as bad as the stories that blatantly hate on games like GTA. If we’re going to deny that games influence violence in teens we can’t flip around and say that they do influence heroism. My guess is that they probably do a bit of both, but the reason young Audrey helped her family probably had more to do with good parenting and being brave, not a videogame.