Do Videogames Cause Violence?

With improvements in graphic rendering technology, the line between virtual reality and the real world is become even more pixelated. Videogames have become the most popular mode of entertainment. When everyone was forced to become involuntary recluses or hermits during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, many once diehard gamers once again reach for their game controllers. The trend didn’t subside when restrictions on public gatherings began to loosen. More people are logging online in multiplayer battle royale free-for-alls than their Netflix accounts. But with mass shootings and acts of violence registering at levels not seen in most third world countries, many pundits continue to question if America’s real “High Scores” can instead be measured in body bags. With many critics questioning. ‘do video games cause violence?’ it’s worth more than precursory glance of the rise of gaming technology and how it coexists in a world fragmented bullet holes and feelings that rival dysconnectivity.

What is Real?

Invariably, at one point in time, a once would-be school shooter or perpetrator of mass violence played a video game. But following this same logic, we could probably correctly assumed that he also watched some violent television show or even an adult magazine. If you ascribe to the fallacy that all shooter come from broken homes and retreated to video games for solace from a splintered existence, you likely conjecture to some other unflattering stereotypes rooted in both racism and false preconceived notions. Videogames have become ubiquitous as TV sets and any other electrical appliance that can be found in almost any modern home. Means of electronic communication were invited into the family home long before gaming consoles, but how many people attributed shootings and stabbings to broadcasts of detectives in brazen shootouts with bad guys? Probably very few. Videogames and any other form of electronic communication have become so popular, we can no longer use their existence as a predetermining factory for proclivity of violence. If we’re gonna operate under this same logic, we might as well as assume that everyone with a cell phone, which has unprecedented access to millions of webpages of unverified access, is a terrorist in training. Technology has become invasive and prevalent in our lives since an early point in adolescent development, that defendants can longer rely on this trope that a nascent product or development distorted reality to the point that they didn’t know what was real and what was fake. The old argument simply falls flat in today’s tech savvy generation.

Stick to Your Guns

While on the topic of shootings, we should probably discuss the primary tool in these violence acts: firearms and guns. And we’ve heard the old spiel and overused trope that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” This old adage is even older than the contrived videogame scapegoat argument. We can’t argue the fact that there has to be a triggerman to commit these atrocious acts of violence, but last we checked these shooters weren’t picking up a videogame controller before, during or immediately after committing these acts. Every act of violent has aggravating and mitigating factors, so there’s no simple correlation between videogames and acts of violence anymore than any other argument that has been brought to the attention of activists. Misappropriating blame and shame to certain industries and interest groups also ignores another very pressing concern in America, and that is our ever-growing mental health epidemic. Unaffordable health care coupled by the COVID pandemic has only made the mental health crisis worse, so to solely blame videogames is foolhardy at best.

Protect What Matters Most

Whatever the root cause of mass shootings and gun violence maybe, we remain unlikely to reach a verdict or conclusion in the near future. Lobbyists and those secretly pushing their corporate agendas have gridlocked congress and during an era when politician has become a career choice, we can’t possibly envision untethering this connection in the coming elections. But what you can do is take your personal protection into your own hands by investing in a panelized safe room from Elephant Safe Room. Our panelized shelters can be discreetly delivered to your home and installed with minimal disturbance to existing infrastructure.