Yeah, some are really naive. It is those like that that give us Americans a bad name. We aren't all this naive though. There are always a few "bad apples" I suppose, please don't judge by that. If you want to get technical though alot of *American* southern and rural areas are kind of behind. I have been in those areas and you have go go miles to find any kind of technology. Even then the selection is limited.
I pretty much know both worlds. Lived in Europe and the US on and off for quite a while (St.Louis, MI, Chicag IL. ) in the 1993-2000 timespan. American girlfriend plans to get married, both of us deciding where to live, the US or the Netherlands. Sadly things didn't work out and I'm now fulltime back in the Netherlands, my native land. I totally agree with DaveC on this.
People in Europe and the US really aren't that different when you get to know them, only the joviality and friendlyness of the US Citizens when you encounter them at first can be confusing for Europeans. I like it very much, you can strike a conversation fairly easy and meet interesting people in the US in the blink of an eye. In Europe too, but it's different, people are more reserved at first. European humor, bluntness can be rather confusing for Americans, cause we can come accross as rather uninterested.
As for being naïve on world-affairs. It's really hard to gain an outlook on the world in certain places, the local news and the newspapers can sometimes only bring news on that specific state or bordering state and little focus is put on world affairs. You really have to strain yourself to remain in contact with world affairs in some rural areas. Whereas this is often totally the reverse in (small) European countries. A large part of the news and newspapers deal with European and World affairs. The educational system in the Netherlands more or less forces kids to learn one or more foreign languages, most often kids want to choose more than one foreign language because the foreign countries are so damn close. It's like driving to another state in the US and have a completely other language. I ended up being able to speak and write Dutch, German, French and I can pretty much read Italian, Spanish whilst the Scandinavian languages are quite comprehensible too....
But generally people are the same no matter where you go. They want the same things in life and first interactions are often coloured by culture, but once you get to really know people - man it's really the same. Believe you me, I've travelled around.
As for playing videogames? The Netherlands and pretty much a lot of Europe is a pretty BAD place to live if you ask me. Consoles are often introduced much later than everywhere else. Quite a lot of NTSC releases do not make it to Eurpean territories. Region Lockouts.
Either there or the Netherlands, Germany, etc. I hear they aren't nuts like some of us Yanks are 
