Recession finally hits the game industry, making texting illegal, and pot use on the rise.

Recession No Fun and Games -- Youth gobble up entertainment products like gerbils would snack on cocoa pebbles, if given the chance, and recently no product has been in greater demand by youth than video games. For the last few years, with DVD sales off and music sales in freefall, the video gaming market has reigned supreme. Sales for popular Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Wii games have grown, it seems, exponentially -- until now. Despite the popularity of titles like "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2," which sold more than 6 million copies, the video game industry as a whole fell 7.6 percent in November, with sales off by $200 million from the month before. For the year, sales are even worse, with the industry experiencing a 12 percent drop. "The industry is still trying to find a silver lining," says Anita Frazier, an analyst for the research organization NPD. (ABC News)

Easy as 1, 2, 3 -- Most educators have always thought that little kids -- those younger than 5 years old -- were too young to do math. But one school in Buffalo, N.Y., is proving the experts wrong. Now some are wondering whether the act of teaching itself can help reshape the brain to grasp more earlier. Teaching is an ancient craft, and yet we really have no idea how it affected the developing brain," says Kurt Fischer, director of the Mind, Brain and Education program at Harvard University. "Well, that is beginning to change, and for the first time, we are seeing the fields of brain science and education work together." (New York Times)

Driving Under the Influence ... of Texting -- We all know, intellectually, that texting while driving is dangerous. One study suggests that folks who text while driving are 23 times more likely to get into a crash than those who don't. But will making such behavior illegal do any good? Many, frankly, are skeptical. In California, a study found that slightly more drivers texted behind the wheel after an anti-texting law went into effect, and many youth say such laws don't curb their texting habits one little bit. "Nobody is going to listen," says 17-year-old Karen Cordova. Furthermore, police agencies say anti-texting laws are hard to enforce. In California, officials have handed out more than 163,000 tickets to folks for talking on their cell phones, but issued only 1,400 texting citations. "The handheld cell phone is relatively easy for us to spot," says Fran Clader, a spokeswoman for California's Highway Patrol. "But with the texting it's a little bit more of a challenge to catch them in the ct, because we have to see it and if they are holding it down in their lap it's going to be harder for us to see." (Reuters)