Video Games and Guns

     I have decided to research the effects that video games have on criminal violence.  It was originally perceived in 2015 by the American Psychological Association that video games have a large influence on behavior in people, especially teenagers (Scutti).  This meant that video games would increase aggressive behavior, as well as a common trend to distance themselves from social scenes.  This however has been discovered to be not the case.  In truth, playing video games actually seemed to decrease the number of violent crimes.  This was done studying the crime rate after a major violent video game was released, and crime levels seemed to decrease, or at least not change much at all.  However, this does not take the long term effects of video games into account.  However, 97% of teenagers between the ages of 12 and 17 play video games, which means that the significant majority of the demographic who plays video games do not commit violent crimes.  The American Academy of Pediatrics urged the American Psychological Association to get rid of their outdated study on violence and criminal activity linked to video games.  However, there still may be effects, so parents are still urged to keep a watch on their kids and what games they play.  This leads me to ask the question, if video games are not a major reason why there are so many shootings and gun related crimes, then what is the key factor in this problem?  The main stream news networks and media have latched on to the idea that video games are the reason there are so many mass shootings, as well as just general violent behavior.  Now that these stories now seem invalid, what could be the cause to violent behavior.  Is there only one major reason to violence, or are there multiple small reasons culminating together to create violent behavior?

Scutti, Susan. “Do video games lead to violence?” CNN, Cable News Network, 22 Feb. 2018, www.cnn.com/2016/07/25/health/video-games-and-violence/index.html.