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It’s time to end the debate about video games and violence February 16, 2018 6.41am EST

In the wake of the Valentine’s Day shooting at a Broward County,

Florida high school, a familiar trope has reemerged: Often, when

a young man is the shooter, people try to blame the tragedy on

violent video games and other forms of media. Florida lawmaker

Jared Moskowitz made the connection the day after the shooting,

saying the gunman “was prepared to pick off students like it’s a

video game.”

In January, after two students were killed and many others

wounded by a 15-year-old shooter in Benton, Kentucky, the

state’s governor criticized popular culture, telling reporters, “We

can’t celebrate death in video games, celebrate death in TV

shows, celebrate death in movies, celebrate death in musical

lyrics and remove any sense of morality and sense of higher

authority and then expect that things like this are not going to

happen.”

But, speaking as a researcher who has studied violent video

games for almost 15 years, I can state that there is no evidence to

support these claims that violent media and real-world violence

are connected. As far back as 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled

that research did not find a clear connection between violent

video games and aggressive behavior. Criminologists who study

mass shootings specifically refer to those sorts of connections as

a “myth.” And in 2017, the Media Psychology and Technology

division of the American Psychological Association released a

statement I helped craft, suggesting reporters and policymakers

cease linking mass shootings to violent media, given the lack of

evidence for a link.

A history of a moral panic

So why are so many policymakers inclined to blame violent

video games for violence? There are two main reasons.

The first is the psychological research community’s efforts to

market itself as strictly scientific. This led to a replication crisis

instead, with researchers often unable to repeat the results of

their studies. Now, psychology researchers are reassessing their

analyses of a wide range of issues – not just violent video games,

but implicit racism, power poses and more.

The other part of the answer lies in the troubled history of

violent video game research specifically. Beginning in the early

2000s, some scholars, anti-media advocates and professional

groups like the APA began working to connect a

methodologically messy and often contradictory set of results to

public health concerns about violence. This echoed historical

patterns of moral panic, such as 1950s concerns about comic

books and Tipper Gore’s efforts to blame pop and rock music in

the 1980s for violence, sex and satanism.

Particularly in the early 2000s, dubious evidence regarding

violent video games was uncritically promoted. But over the

years, confidence among scholars that violent video games

influence aggression or violence has crumbled.

Reviewing all the scholarly literature

My own research has examined the degree to which violent

video games can – or can’t – predict youth aggression and

violence. In a 2015 meta-analysis, I examined 101 studies on the

subject and found that violent video games had little impact on

kids’ aggression, mood, helping behavior or grades.

Two years later, I found evidence that scholarly journals’

editorial biases had distorted the scientific record on violent

video games. Experimental studies that found effects were more

likely to be published than studies that had found none. This was

consistent with others’ findings. As the Supreme Court noted,

any impacts due to video games are nearly impossible to

distinguish from the effects of other media, like cartoons and

movies.

Any claims that there is consistent evidence that violent video

games encourage aggression are simply false.

Spikes in violent video games’ popularity are well-known to

correlate with substantial declines in youth violence – not

increases. These correlations are very strong, stronger than most

seen in behavioral research. More recent research suggests that

the releases of highly popular violent video games are associated

with immediate declines in violent crime, hinting that the

releases may cause the drop-off.

The role of professional groups

With so little evidence, why are people like Kentucky Gov. Matt

Bevin still trying to blame violent video games for mass

shootings by young men? Can groups like the National Rifle

Association seriously blame imaginary guns for gun violence?

A key element of that problem is the willingness of professional

guild organizations such as the APA to promote false beliefs

about violent video games. (I’m a fellow of the APA.) These

groups mainly exist to promote a profession among news media,

the public and policymakers, influencing licensing and insurance

laws. They also make it easier to get grants and newspaper

headlines. Psychologists and psychology researchers like myself

pay them yearly dues to increase the public profile of

psychology. But there is a risk the general public may mistake

promotional positions for objective science.

In 2005 the APA released its first policy statement linking violent

video games to aggression. However, my recent analysis of

internal APA documents with criminologist Allen Copenhaver

found that the APA ignored inconsistencies and methodological

problems in the research data.

The APA updated its statement in 2015, but that sparked

controversy immediately: More than 230 scholars wrote to the

group asking it to stop releasing policy statements altogether. I

and others objected to perceived conflicts of interest and lack of

transparency tainting the process.

It’s bad enough that these statements misrepresent the actual

scholarly research and misinform the public. But it’s worse when

those falsehoods give advocacy groups like the NRA cover to shift

blame for violence onto nonissues like video games. The

resulting misunderstandings delay efforts to address mental

illness and other issues that are actually related to gun violence.

Psychology US Supreme Court Video games Reproducibility Aggression Gun violence

Mass shootings Violent crime Violent video games Debunking US gun violence

Reproducibility crisis Reproducible research American Psychological Association

Author

Christopher J. Ferguson Professor of Psychology, Stetson University

Disclosure statement

Christopher J. Ferguson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Playing violent video games doesn’t make kids more aggressive. AP Photo/Paul Sakuma

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