Before Video Games Caused Violence, 60 Minutes Told Us That Dungeons & Dragons Did – Looper

Modern society loves to blame video games for violent behavior in gamers. There’s a large range of video games that put the player in control of a character who chooses to be violent for a number of reasons. Because video games can be extremely violent, people love to use them as a scapegoat for violent behavior even though it’s been disproven.

The American Psychological Association wrote an article in 2019 about the correlation between blaming video games and violent crimes. Lead researcher Patrick Markey, Ph.D., said, “When a violent act is carried out by someone who doesn’t match the racial stereotype of what a violent person looks like, people tend to seek an external explanation for the violent behavior. When a white child from the suburbs commits a horrific violent act like a school shooting, then people are more likely to erroneously blame video games than if the child was African American.”

In a CNN article, Oxford University Associate Professor Andrew Przybylski discussed scapegoating media older generations don’t understand. “Society has a concern about new technology, parents or policymakers get involved, and maybe the researchers don’t have much experience with the technology themselves, and so the first few attempts to study the thing are pretty poorly done,” Przybylski said. He further insisted, “the evidence has become pretty clear that, where there are correlations, it’s probably because of a third factor.”

Przybylski also pointed out that gamers are extremely diverse worldwide, yet the trend for blaming violent behavior on violent games tends to come from the U.S., where mass shootings have become a severe problem. If these patterns are only showing up in the States, but video games are played everywhere, how could they be the cause?