Will Greenwal COMMENTARY

No, Video Games Are Not

A Factor in Mass
Shootings

E
l Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio both saw
horrific mass shootings in August,
prompting another round of “What’s
causing this?”

Rather than acknowledge the political

motivations of the El Paso shooter or the line of
radicalization that led him toward reactionary Sascha
Will Greenwald
Segan ishas
the
white supremacy, a number of politicians have lead
beenmobile
covering
analyst
returned to a popular scapegoat: video games. for
consumer technology
PC Magazine. His
commentary
for a decade has
and has
Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, House Minority also
served
appeared
on the on
editorial
Fox
Leader Kevin McCarthy, and President Donald News,
staffsCNBC,
of CNET.com,
CNN, and
Trump all cited violent video games as a factor various
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and
and
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newspapers
PC.
in these shootings and other acts of violence in around the world.
the US.

These complaints are a decades-old,

unsubstantiated distraction. There is no
significant evidence linking video games to
mass shootings.

Video games are not unique to the United States

and are incredibly popular worldwide. According
to NewZoo, the United States is the number-two
video game market in the world, with 178.7
million players—57.4 percent of the population.
Japan is third, with 67.6 million players, or 53.2
Will Greenwal percent, followed by South Korea, the UK, and @AggroWill
Germany. China is first across five of the six
biggest video game markets in the world—
somewhere between 53 and 57 percent of the
population plays video games.

What is unique in the US, however, is violence.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs
and Crime, the US homicide rate was 5.3 for
every 100,000 people in 2017. The UK was at 1.2,
Germany was 1, South Korea was 0.6., and Japan
sat at 0.2.

Forget about correlation not equalling causation.

There isn’t even any correlation here. There is no
through-line from violent video games to actual
violence. And that’s just looking at broad
homicide rates. Mass shootings, defined as
incidents in which at least four people are shot
and killed, make the US look several magnitudes
worse. According to the Gun Violence Archive,
there have been 255 mass shootings in the United
States this year (and the number might have risen
since I wrote this). But in other countries where
video games are also popular, mass shootings are
effectively nonexistent.

Another argument is that violent video games

desensitize people to violence, encourage
violence, or otherwise promote real-life violent
action. A 2017 study from Frontiers in
Psychology found no evidence that violent video
games, even when played to excess, desensitize
players to actual violence. Another paper
published in Perspectives on Psychological
Science this year found that violent video games
do increase aggressiveness, but only slightly.
 In 2015, the American Psychological Association
Will Greenwal (APA) acknowledged a link between violent video
games and aggression, based on a variety of other
studies. But it noted that there wasn’t sufficient It’s pretty clear,
research on the subject, including data across based on the
socioeconomic, ethnic, and cultural differences. It available data,
recommends studying the subject more. that violent
video games
It’s pretty clear, based on the available data, that aren’t to blame
violent video games aren’t to blame for Dayton or for Dayton or
El Paso, or Virginia Beach, Thousand Oaks,
El Paso.
Pittsburgh, Santa Fe, or Parkland. We can
consider each of these shooters to be mentally ill
and ignore their intentions. We can look at their
personal, social, and political beliefs and try to
glean some meaning from them. We can talk
about the availability and cultural relevance of
guns in this country and its effect on violence. We
can do a lot of things to try to better understand
why these shootings happen.

But there’s no evidence that violent video games

are a factor, and making that connection is a lazy,
dishonest deflection. Let’s stop entertaining the
idea unless clear, correlative data can back it up.

will_greenwald@pcmag.com

PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION I SUBSCRIBE I SEPTEMBER 2019

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