Ctrl Alt Defeat: Is Gaming Inspiring Violence IRL?

After nearly every mass shooting event, the public seems to receive the same message: “the killer was a gamer”. In fact, over the past 50 years, video games have become the scapegoat of choice when someone exhibits violent behavior or commits a violent crime. But what does the research say? Do video games drive violent crime?

Hundreds of scientific studies have evaluated the relationship between violent video game play and aggression. It is true that, of these, a few have reported small, short-term increases in aggression following exposure to violent video games. While this may seem like a reason to sound the alarm, it is important to note that these increases in aggression are typically measured within the first few minutes following violent video game play and there has been no evidence to suggest that these short term rises have any long term impact on players level of aggression. Additionally, for every study that has reported short increases in aggression, there are far more that have concluded that there are no significant links between violent video game play and aggression or other undesirable behavioral outcomes such as anti-social attitudes or bullying behavior among children and adolescents.

Another way to think about it is if there were a direct relationship between violent video games and aggression, then we should have seen an increase in crime over the last twenty years corresponding with the rise in popularity of violent video games.Youth crime should have shown a particularly steep increase since, presumably, teenagers have more time to dedicate to video game play (and thus, have a greater exposure to violent content) and they have traditionally been found to be more easily influenced by media messages than adults. But this increase has not occurred.  In fact, the opposite has happened. With the steady increase in violent video game consumption over the last two decades, we’ve seen a steady decline in violent crime committed by those under the age of 18. While we cannot infer clear cause and effect relationships here, this does indicate the unlikelihood that violent video game play actively contributes to an increase in youth violence.

Whether you love them or hate them, violent video games have been the scapegoat of crimes over the last half century. However, looking at the hundreds of research studies that have looked at this relationship we can conclude that there are short term increases in aggression following exposure to violent video games in laboratory settings; however, there is no evidence linking violent video game play to violent behavior or crime. I hope that helps us all rest a bit easier knowing that our child’s after school activities are not a direct precursor to violence.