It was a gorgeous spring afternoon in April when we heard about the shooter.
I was a contractor at Google at the time, grabbing lunch with some fellow coworkers, when all of a sudden all of our phones simultaneously started pinging loudly with the words, “ACTIVE SHOOTER ON YOUTUBE CAMPUS. LOCKDOWN IN EFFECT.”
My coworkers and I just stared at each other for several seconds before running back to our office in full panic. We were 20 miles away at Main Campus, but had been at the YouTube campus just the day before. And we had many friends who often frequented there for meetings.
It was several hours of pacing around our office, refreshing our emails and Twitter, and frantically texting all of our friends, before we finally got any indication of the extent of the damage. Thankfully, none of my friends were at YouTube that day, and no one, aside from the shooter, was killed. But for the first time, a terrifying reality for so many, became very, very real for me.
We’ve heard the story so many times before in the United States; a gunman opens fire at a school, at a birthday party, at a bank. Families are devastated, and before the dust has settled, already the politicians are passing the blame. It’s the guns, it’s failed parenting, it’s mental illness, it’s the video games. In 2018, following the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 people dead, President Donald Trump blamed video games and other forms of media for the increased number of mass shootings in the country, saying, “I’m hearing more and more people saying the level of violence in video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts.”
There is certainly no shortage of violent video games in the mainstream; The Last of Us, Halo, Call of Duty, Red Dead Redemption, and Grand Theft Auto immediately come to mind. But in a country where more than 66% of adults play video games, according to the Entertainment Software Association, can that really be pinpointed as the key factor to such a monumental increase in gun violence?
According to the experts, not really.
In 1999, after students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked through the front doors of Columbine High School and murdered 12 of their classmates, plus one teacher, came the first reckoning. It was revealed that Harris and Klebold were avid players of the game Doom, a first person shooter notorious for its gratuitous display of blood, gore, and destruction. In his journal, shortly before the massacre, Harris wrote, “I must not be sidetracked by my feelings of sympathy…so I will force myself to believe that everyone is just another monster from Doom.”
There’s no question that playing video games of any kind, violent or not, stimulates that part of the brain that fuels the imagination. I’ve been playing Halo since I was 12 years old; as a kid, I dreamed of becoming a Spartan, killing the bad guys and saving the galaxy, and looking super spiffy in my combat armor. Hell, I’m almost 35 now and I still wish I was a Spartan. But the fact of the matter is, I know I’m not a Spartan. I’m not on an artificial ring world; I’m in a corporate office answering emails and occasionally eating pork chops for lunch.
So then, where is the disconnect? What makes the ever growing list of killers from Columbine to Sandy Hook to Covenant School different from the millions and millions of Americans who play games every single day, and don’t go on murderous rampages?
The American Psychological Association has found a link “between violent video game use and both increases in aggressive behavior … and decreases in prosocial behavior, empathy, and moral engagement.” Similar studies, such as one conducted by researchers at the University of Rochester, found similar results. The problem with these studies however, is that the sample size is relatively small and over a shorter span of time. In the case of the University of Rochester, they studied 100 students (41 males and 59 females) over the course of a 20 minute playtime test. This simply isn’t a large enough (or long enough) sample size to determine any meaningful impact that violent gaming may have on a person’s psyche.
However, experts like Western Michigan University professor Whitney DeCamp have found through their own analysis of the data that such information actually proves that playing violent games does not correlate to increased aggression. By reviewing a previous study from the 2008 Delaware School Survey, which surveyed over 6000 eighth graders, DeCamp factored out several variances; whether students already had a likelihood to play violent games due to a natural desire for such content, gender, and family relations. With those factors excluded, there is no meaningful correlation between violent games and increased aggression.
DeCamp states that the core issue is in ““looking at those two things in a vacuum: Kids who like to play brutal video games may have a predisposition toward aggression,” he said.
Of course, that’s a completely different area of study, and nulls any argument that video games are the source of the problem if a propensity for violence already exists. And honestly, is a much more unsettling thought.
Very recently I was sitting with a friend of mine in a tiny breakfast joint in downtown Denver. Being just 30 minutes from Columbine, it was hard not to let the conversation drift to that topic. I told her about my research, what I already knew, what I’d learned, what I hoped to learn. How certain I was that I’d be able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that games had nothing to do with any of it. But with every article I’ve read, every expert I’ve researched, every study I’ve pored over, the back and forth and certainty around their findings, I found myself more and more lost in shades of gray.
“I guess this isn’t as black and white as I thought it was going to be,” I mused as I took another swig of my coffee. “I really thought I’d be able to parse through the mess, but there just isn’t a clear yes or no.”
We were quiet for a moment before she looked at me and said, “Maybe that’s your answer. Is that such a bad thing?”
And the more I think about it, the more I realize she’s right.
We’ve been sifting through the ashes of so many tragedies since Columbine, and we’ve asked ourselves the same questions with the hope that maybe this time, the answer will make sense. Maybe this time, it will stick out like a sore thumb, something we can all point at and collectively say “This is the reason! We’ve cracked the code!” But inevitably, we will find ourselves back in the ashes, not even knowing what it is we’re looking for, or why.
There is no denying that those who glorify violence find satisfaction in games of the same nature. And there is no denying that for those who wish to do harm, like Eric Harris, like Dylan Klebold, games like Doom provided the foundation on which their massacre would be designed.
But what does that mean for the rest of us? For the millions of gamers each day that find themselves equally horrified by the brutality of our fellow man, and forced to wrestle with our own conscience about our hobby, which provides comfort, escapism, and release?
It’s okay to enjoy games. It’s okay to have fun blasting your way through hordes of enemies in Halo, or Call of Duty, or Grand Theft Auto. Millions of Americans do so every day, and not a single one of them will convert that anger into a real life massacre. But I hope someday soon, the answer feels more tangible, and by extension, within our reach.
Works Cited
Anderson, C.A, and A Shibuya. “APA Task Force Report on Violent Video Games.” PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1037/e502002020-001.
Kaufman, Ellie. “Fact Check: Are Violent Video Games Connected to Mass Shootings? | CNN Politics.” CNN, Cable News Network, 5 Aug. 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/05/politics/violent-video-game-shooting-fact-check/index.html.
Scutti, Susan. “Do Video Games Lead to Violence?” CNN, Cable News Network, 22 Feb. 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/25/health/video-games-and-violence/index.html.
