Fact check: Claim of link between video games, school shootings refuted by studies

Sudiksha Kochi, USA TODAY
Updated ·7 min read
12

The claim: Post implies school shootings are linked to violent video games

A March 29 Facebook post (direct link, archived link) shows a cartoon image of a boy playing a video game while two adults watch a news broadcast about a school massacre.

"Guns cause all of this trouble!" reads a text bubble attributed to one of the adults. A text bubble attributed to the child reads, “Kill them! Kill them all!”

Some commenters linked video games to school shootings.

"Your (sic) exactly right and the kids are getting younger that are playing these types of games!" reads one comment.

"They are being brainwashed and desensitized," reads another comment.

The post generated over 1,000 shares in less than a week.

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Our rating: Missing context

The implied claim here conflicts with the expert consensus. There is no evidence of a causal link between school shootings and video games, according to an array of studies, meta-analyses and psychology and sociology experts.

Belief in link between shootings, video games based on logical fallacies

On March 27, a 28-year-old gunned down three children and three adults at a private elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, before being confronted and killed by police, as USA TODAY reported.

The incident led some social media users to revive a widely circulated claim that video games, particularly those that are violent or graphic, are linked to school shootings. Former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made similar claims in the wake of past school shootings.

The link between video games and aggressive behavior is a subject of debate among researchers, said James Ivory, a new media and communication technology expert at Virginia Tech. And some studies have claimed to show a link.

But experts have come to a broad consensus that video games don’t cause people to commit violent acts like school shootings.

"There is a relevant fallacy called the base rate fallacy wherein people attribute common activities, e.g., playing video games, to rarer events, e.g., mass shootings, even if the common activity is not tied to the rarer event," Ivory said in an email. "For example, most mass shooting perpetrators also wear shoes, but wearing shoes is not tied to mass shootings."

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A group of psychologists with the American Psychological Association released a 2017 statement that said there's scant evidence of "any causal or correlational connection between playing violent video games and actually committing violent activities."

Whitney DeCamp, a sociology professor at Western Michigan University, said his research found that a properly nuanced analysis reveals no statistical connection.

"My own research has found a correlation, but it disappears after controlling for other factors," DeCamp said. "Other studies have sometimes reported finding a correlation, but sometimes fail to introduce controls that would properly examine that finding for potential spuriousness. ... We lack evidence supporting any effects from video games on violent behavior."

James Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University, agreed that other factors must be taken into consideration when examining why people commit violent acts like school shootings.

"If a person already has a tendency toward violence, and they play violent video games, (that) doesn't necessarily mean that video game made them violent," Fox said. "It's a function of who you are. It doesn't create who you are."

Research studies and data show no proof of link

Most research studies show no evidence of a causal link between video games and school shootings. This consensus becomes clear through meta-analysis studies, which combine findings from large numbers of studies that use different methodologies.

A 2008 meta-analysis authored by Chris Ferguson, a psychology professor at Stetson University, found that existing scientific literature on violent video games and aggression demonstrated “no significant relationship between violent video game exposure and school shooting incidents."

Likewise, a 2014 time-series analysis examined the associations among violent crime (particularly homicides and aggravated assaults), video game sales, internet keyword searches for violent video game guides and popular video game release dates. The analysis found that violent crime across the U.S. decreased at the same time video games were becoming more popular.

In addition, a 2019 meta-analysis found that violent video games do increase aggressive behavior but that these effects are almost always quite small. One of the co-authors, Maya Mathur, told The Nation's Health that "research on video games, as a whole, says almost nothing on video games and mass violence."

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Data also shows that the rate of mass shooters who play video games is low.

A 2021 study Ferguson co-authored analyzed 169 male firearm mass homicide perpetrators and males of the same age who had not committed mass murders between 1992 and 2020. He found that mass homicide perpetrators played fewer violent video games than the control group.

Other countries with a large number of video gamers also have far fewer school shootings than the U.S. For instance, China surpassed the U.S. in 2018 with video game revenue, according to data compiled by Newzoo and CNBC News. But China had only one school shooting from January 2009 to May 2018, CNN reported

A 2012 Washington Post analysis that examined the world’s 10 largest video game markets found there was no statistical correlation between video game consumption and gun-related murders. Countries such as the Netherlands and South Korea, which have some of the highest video game spending per capita, were found to have the fewest gun-related murders.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media users who shared the claim for comment.

The New York Times, NBC News, the Washington Post and CNN have addressed similar versions of the claim.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Studies refute attempts to link video games, shootings