In the nearly 60-year history of video games, very little evidence shows it incites violence and that hack politicians use them as scapegoats.
When games like Mortal Kombat and Night Trap first shocked audiences in 1992 with digitized violence and gore, it might’ve made sense that there were congressional hearings on the matter.
Blood and gore in video games was a relatively new phenomenon, though there was plenty to be had in cinema and comics.
Those hearings took place almost 30 years ago in 1993-94.
As time continues, it becomes more patently ridiculous to blame society’s ills on even the most gory, tasteless video games.
The tenuous assertion that there’s a causal link between video games and real-life acts of violence has been disproven repeatedly.
No link between bullying, delinquency and violent video games was found, according to an Aug. 24, 2013 study in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
Researchers have also found no evidence supporting the theory that video games make players more violent, according to a Jan. 16, 2018 Science Daily article.
More recently, a study published in January 2019 in the Royal Society Open Science journal concluded there’s no association with video game engagement and adolescent aggression.
In a 2001 Youth Violence National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) report, Surgeon General David Satcher said the impact of violent media on aggression is very small, compared to other things.
Violent video games influencing children to become more violent adults is still a talking point decades after it has been disproven.
Suppose politicians had a point and there was a grain of truth in the idea that exposure to violent video games as children leads to violent adults.
Well, it’s a good thing one of the results of those 1993-94 congressional hearings was the formation of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board. According to its website, the video game industry nonprofit gives one of five category ratings based on the age-appropriateness of a game from Early Childhood to Adults Only.
Games with realistic violence and gore are rated Mature or higher.
The latter two ratings, Mature and the rarely-given Adults Only, prompt retailers to check the ID of anyone purchasing those games to see if they’re over 17.
This means anyone underage who accesses those games is either doing it through illicit means or more likely, having an adult buy those games for them.
In such cases, it’s not the video games at fault, it’s the adults.
But ultimately, the real issue is that violent video games are used as a scapegoat for the reality: how accessible guns are.
People should stop blaming violent video games every time a shooting happens because in the end, it just distracts from the reality of our violent nature.
Hopefully, the argument will soon lose all credibility and we see anyone who uses it as a scapegoat for who they really are: people flinging around misinformation to obfuscate the truth.
