Okay, whenever I read poorly research fear mongering garbage articles like this I want to straight up take a magic marker to my screen and start making corrections. But since I cannot afford a new screen, I will do the next best thing and pick apart the article one paragraph at a time. So let’s begin: Playing between 8-15 hours per day is NOT normal for anyone, and in no way is indicative of the average play time for a gamer like me. In fact, the average amount played by gamers is between 4-8 per week. And NOT 8-15 hours per day. Clearly, him spending so much time in a video game was already a sign pointing to problems in his life. Video games weren’t the problem it was one of the signs that something was wrong.

Oh DR. Patricia please don’t quit your day job because as a comedian your jokes kind of suck. There have been many modern-day studies that have shown that there is no link between real-world violence and video games. Studies were done by the American Psychological Association, and they came to the following conclusion: “Contrary to the claims that violent video games are linked to aggressive assaults and homicides, no evidence was found to suggest that this medium was positively related to real-world violence in the United States. Unexpectedly, many of the results were suggestive of a decrease in violent crime in response to violent video games.”

DR. Patricia, why are you citing a 24-year-old study as evidence that video games cause real-world violence? And why not post a link to the study? Could it be you mentioned this study was because it was the only one that actually supported your claims? Seems a bit intellectually dishonest especially coming from a professor. Could it be that The Maimi Herald got you to write this piece because it pushes their political agenda, or that it would get you the most clicks? Maybe a bit of both?

You mean this study? The one that was inherently flawed as well? But why would you not also mention the fact that video games are a positive outlet for aggression and can teach kids to control their anger in a positive manner? Or the fact that video games also act as a stress reliever, reducing depression, and making you feel better. And while the studies do conclude higher levels of aggression NONE of them are able to translate it into real-world aggression.

While high aggressiveness and low empathy might describe a mass shooter, it does not change the fact that 80% of shooters did not play video games. “Psychologist Patrick Markey’s research shows 80 percent of mass shooters did not show an interest in violent video games.” So that fact alone pretty much invalidates everything you have stated in this entire article and I could have ended it here, but me being a masochistic asshole lets continue to drudge through this article.

“Learning how to carry out mass murder (“Call of Duty,” for example)”

I will repeat this only once for the peanut gallery, playing and shooting a gun in a video game is not even close to firing a real-life weapon. I wrote an entire article about it here. Ttl;dr: Video games (even Virtual Reality games) can’t hope to encompass all the variables that actually need to be taken into account when shooting at a target. Just off the top of my head things like: bullet drop, gun recoil, wind speed, and direction, the inertia, and speed of the bullet being fired and the distance of the target. Not to mention having the correct stance when firing your weapon. Almost none of the above-mentioned things can be tough using a video game controller or in Virtual reality.

That would be a lie, Switzerland until 2010, all capable males were required to keep a Sig SG 550 and a Sig Sauer p229 at hand. Both of which are semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15. And you are allowed to own Automatic rifles with a special permit, Italy allows an unlimited number of hunting weapons (both rifles and shotguns) which also includes weapons like AK-47’s. There are plenty of other countries who have the same or even less restrictive gun laws than the United States. –Source–

The United States is the only place where people play a lot of video games and frequently have mass shooting events. Nowhere else in the world is this a trend, even though there are plenty of countries consume more video games and have the same gun laws as the United States. Having said that the countries with the most gun deaths and violence are not the ones that spent the most on video games. The outlier being the United States:

Source for the above graphs can be found here and here. So the amount of video games being consumed does not correlate with gun violence.

I did not realize that as a professor you needed to build strawmen to intentionally misrepresent the discussion and the facts. How can you compare video game consumption to cigarettes? Cigarettes have been scientifically proven to contain harmful material that causes cancer, but it has also been scientifically proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that video games do not cause real-world violence.

I have already proven multiple times that this is not the case, but let’s say I do agree (Which I don’t). Would it also not mean that having more cars on the road mean that we increase the risk factors for having car accidents? Or anything that has an inherent risk. So using your logic the more video games we consume the higher the risk is that we will have a mass shooting. Just a pity that this is not a trend outside of the United States, which means we can throw this entire garbage article right out the window…

I genuinely laughed when I read DR. Patricia’s biography. It sounds like a totally legitimate field of study…

[Editorial Note:] For extra reading I suggest reading this research paper by the University of York who has found no evidence to support the theory that video games make players more violent. You can read it here, the methodology and research behind it is well thought out and rock solid.