Page Reader AI | Ten-country comparison suggests there’s little or no link between video games and gun murders

Ten-country comparison suggests there’s little or no link between video games and gun murders - The Washington Post

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Key Finding: No Correlation Between Video Games and Gun Murders

A study examining ten of the world's largest video game markets found no correlation between video game consumption and gun-related homicides. This contradicts the common assumption that violent video games contribute to real-world gun violence.

Data Analysis

The analysis compared per capita video game spending and gun-related homicide rates in these ten countries. The United States, while having a high rate of both video game spending and gun violence, was highlighted as an outlier. Other countries with high video game consumption demonstrated significantly lower gun violence rates.

Counter-Intuitive Findings

The data suggests a possible inverse relationship, with countries spending more on video games having lower gun violence rates. This is possibly due to the fact that wealthier countries, capable of supporting a thriving video game market, also tend to have lower overall crime rates.

Conclusion

The study concludes that, based on available international data, there is little to no evidence supporting the claim that video game consumption leads to increased gun violence.

Ultimately, the high rate of gun-related homicides in the United States remains a significant and separate issue that requires further investigation.

The search for meaning is a natural response to any tragedy, and the latest U.S. mass shooting is eliciting questions about, among other things, the potential role of violent video games. After all, with kids and increasingly teenagers spending so much time hammering away at simulated shooters, is it any wonder when they pick up actual guns? Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod lamented on Twitter, "In NFL post-game: an ad for shoot 'em up video game. All for curbing weapons of war. But shouldn't we also quit marketing murder as a game?"

But it turns out that the data just doesn't support this connection. Looking at the world's 10 largest video game markets yields no evident, statistical correlation between video game consumption and gun-related killings.

It's true that Americans spend billions of dollars on video games every year and that the United States has the highest firearm murder rate in the developed world. But other countries where video games are popular have much lower firearm-related murder rates. In fact, countries where video game consumption is highest tend to be some of the safest countries in the world, likely a product of the fact that developed or rich countries, where consumers can afford expensive games, have on average much less violent crime.

Here's the data for video game spending per capita and gun-related homicides in the world's 10 largest video game markets. The United States, as it so often does on gun-related statistics, really stands out:

Of course, these comparisons assume that national video game markets are largely uniform, with Dutch, Korean and American consumers playing the same spectrum of games. With the possible exception of Japan, video game markets are quite global, so this is an imperfect but generally safe assumption.

Now, if there were in fact a close correlation between video game consumption and gun violence, then we would expect the data to trend upward. That is, we would expect that the countries that spend the most on video games per person would also be the most violent, by virtue of the effects of the games. Here's what the data should look like, in that case:

But, the data does not show this trend. Here's a linear trend line for this data. Again, with only 10 datapoints, it's not a perfect comparison. But it's hard to ignore that this data actually suggests a slight downward shift in violence as video game consumption increases.

So, what have we learned? That video game consumption, based on international data, does not seem to correlate at all with an increase in gun violence. That countries where video games are popular also tend to be some of the world's safest (probably because these countries are stable and developed, not because they have video games). And we also have learned, once again, that America's rate of firearm-related homicides is extremely high for the developed world.