(CNN) – In the wake of mass shootings in California, Texas and Ohio, President Donald Trump and top Republicans have cited video games as one explanation for the violence.
Experts said there is little evidence to link violent games to violence in the real-world. (Source: CNN/file)
In a speech Monday, Trump blamed “gruesome and grisly video games” for a “glorification of violence.”
But experts said there is little evidence to link violent games to violence in the real-world.
For example, a study published this year looked at more than 1,000 British adolescents.
It found no link between the time spent playing violent video games and aggressive behavior.
That’s consistent with other recent research showing little – if any – link between violence and video games.
Other researchers through the years have echoed this, and a policy statement from the Society for Media Psychology and Technology of the American Psychological Association even says that making this link is counterproductive.
“Journalists and policy makers do their constituencies a disservice in cases where they link acts of real-world violence with the perpetrators’ exposure to violent video games or other violent media,” the policy statement said. “There’s little scientific evidence to support the connection, and it may distract us from addressing those issues that we know contribute to real-world violence.”
The Entertainment Software Association also pushed back against those assertions, the Associated Press reported.
“More than 165 million Americans enjoy video games, and billions of people play video games worldwide,” the group said in a statement. “Yet other societies, where video games are played as avidly, do not contend with the tragic levels of violence that occur in the U.S.”
Copyright 2019 CNN. All rights reserved. Gray Television Group, Inc., contributed to this report.
