New Paper Suggests No Link Between Violent Games and Violent People

It’s nice when somebody smarter than you says what you’ve been trying to say in a more intelligible manner than you could ever achieve.

In his paper titled The School Shooting/Violent Video Game Link: Causal Relationship or Moral Panic? Christopher J. Ferguson argues that claims linking video games and violence are “faulty and fail to acknowledge the significant methodological and constructional divides between existing video game research and acts of serious aggression and violence.”

Ars Technica have an excellent digest of the report that I highly recommend to anybody interested in the topic.

One of the clearest points Ferguson makes with the report is the one made with the following, very basic chart:

During the conclusion of the report, Ferguson points out the basic fact, almost always overlooked by the scaremongering and shock based mainstream media, that there simply is no reliable evidence supporting a link between violence in behaviour and violence in video games.

As presented here, the wealth of evidence, from social science research on video games, to governmental reports and legal cases, to real world data on crime, fails to establish a link between violent video games and violent crimes, including school shootings. The link has not merely been unproven; I argue that the wealth of available data simply weighs against any causal relationship.

Hopefully this report will join the rest of the research in the field and act as solid ground for all of us who are forced to defend video games in this most controversial and utterly unnecessary argument.