Western Michigan University Whitney DeCamp says millions of people play violent video games, but he says very few of them commit violent acts. DeCamp’s research into the link, or lack of it, between video games and violent crime has recently been getting more attention.
President Donald Trump and others have raised the issue of violent video games following the shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 people dead. DeCamp, a professor of Sociology and Director of Western’s Kercher Center for Social Research, first started looking into video games to test the idea of correlation and causation.
DeCamp says it’s true that males are far more likely to play video games than females, and most mass shootings are carried out by men. But DeCamp says research doesn’t support the idea that violent video games lead to violent behavior. DeCamp says violent video games have become more prevalent, but the United States is at a near historic lows in violent crime.
While males are more likely to play violent video games, DeCamp says the relationship between gender and violent behavior goes back well before video games, or any other form of modern media.
