FBI Profilers Don’t Believe Violent Video Games Cause Violent Behavior

To be frank, I'm still amazed that this conversation is still happening. If you need further proof that there is probably not a direct link between pretend violence and actual violence, FBI profilers apparently don't see video games as a cause of shootings and other violent crimes.

The reality check comes from Mary Ellen O'Tool, a former profiler who spoke on yesterday's CBS show, Face the Nation. According to her, profilers will still include a person's interest in gaming when making an assessment of their risk to commit a crime. They'll also take a look at if the criminal used a game in some way to plan an attack. However, O'Tool stated that, "We don't see these as the cause of violence. We see them as sources of fueling ideation that's already there."

Christopher Ferguson, a Texas A&M International University psychology professor, also called attention to the fact that youth violence has declined to the lowest it's been in 40 years. Ferguson explained:

I think we have to put this discussion, to some extent, in historical perspective... When new media come out that they tend to go through a period of what we call moral panic, in which they are blamed for all manner of societal ills. And probably the best example of this was from the 1950s, when we had Congress and psychiatrists who were claiming that comic books were responsible for not only juvenile delinquency, but homosexuality.

Ferguson and O'Tool's stance is in line with a study conducted by the U.S. Secret Service, who found that only 12% of those responsible for school violence showed an interest in violent video games.

At this point, I'm really uncertain why the issue is still being discussed. Every major study has been either inconclusive, or has found no direct link between playing violent video games and perpetrating actual violence. The fact that some are still immediately jumping on the anti-video game bandwagon whenever a new tragedy occurs, simply distracts from the real issues at hand. Hopefully, with an increasing number of experts coming out in the defense of gaming, we will see a steady decline of this erroneous line of thought.