Debate over connection between games and crime dates back to Columbine – but despite moral panic evidence doesn’t stack up

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Donald Trump will host executives from the video game industry at the White House on Thursday, resurrecting a debate over the link between violent video games and gun-related deaths in the aftermath of the Parkland high school shooting.

The meeting comes as the president and lawmakers in Washington face continued pressure to act in the wake of the 14 February massacre at Marjory Stoneman High School, which left 17 people dead.

Although the White House has provided few details on the meeting, Trump’s focus on the role of violence in entertainment signaled the president may be embracing a more conservative response to the Parkland shooting, even as the push for stricter gun laws reaches a fever pitch.

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Each time there’s a school shooting in America, someone inevitably points the finger at video games.

Trump similarly targeted video games and movies for influencing children and young adults when discussing the Parkland tragedy at the White House last month.

“I’m hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts,” Trump said.

The first major public debate over whether violent video games make people who play them violent took place after the Columbine massacre in 1999. The shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were players of a graphic first-person shooter game called Doom, and amid desperate attempts to make sense of the killing, it became an easy scapegoat.

The video game industry was blamed again after Sandy Hook, this time by the head of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, who called it a “corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people” and mentioned titles such as Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto.

But despite the moral panic, the evidence doesn’t stack up.



There have been many studies and meta-analyses examining the issue, and none has shown a causal link between violent video games and violent behavior. The few studies that find a weak correlation between aggressive behavior and video games lack context, failing to highlight how other competitive activities such as team sports have the same impact.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Smith & Wesson rifle for sale. Studies have found only a weak link between aggression and video games, and lack context. Photograph: Keith Srakocic/AP

“Video games are plainly not the issue: entertainment is distributed and consumed globally, but the US has an exponentially higher level of gun violence than any other nation,” said Dan Hewitt from the Entertainment Software Association, which represents companies including Ubisoft, Nintendo, EA and Activision.

“The upcoming meeting at the White House, which ESA will attend, will provide the opportunity to have a fact-based conversation about video game ratings, our industry’s commitment to parents, and the tools we provide to make informed entertainment choices.”

Trump has held a series of roundtable meetings since the Parkland shooting, often vacillating between disparate policy positions on guns.

Last week, the president drew backlash from conservatives for embracing a series of gun control measures long opposed by Republicans and the NRA. In a meeting with senators from both parties, Trump threw his support behind universal background checks, raising the age limit for purchasing firearms and even entertained banning certain assault-style rifles.

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He has since made little use of the bully pulpit to call for such measures, even as the debate on Capitol Hill has appeared to stall amid a lack of consensus over what remains one of the most politically contentious issues in Washington.

The White House failed to explicitly say on Wednesday why Trump felt it necessary to have Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, tell reporters the president believed violent video games was “certainly something that should be looked at”.

“The president wants to continue the conversation on every different area that we can to help promote school safety,” she said.

Although he made a more forceful push than Trump on gun control following Sandy Hook, Barack Obama also considered violence in video games part of the equation. Among other actions, Obama called on Congress in 2013 to fund research at the Centers for Disease Control “into the effects that violent video games have on young minds”.

“We don’t benefit from ignorance,” Obama said at the time. “We don’t benefit from not knowing the science of this epidemic of violence.”