Invading your living rooms, storming your phones, even

taking the blame for society’s ills.

“These video games dehumanize individuals.”

Like after the recent wave of shootings

when American politicians shared thoughts, prayers

and concerns about video games.

“This was a maybe a video game to this evil demon.

He wanted to be a super soldier

for his Call of Duty game.”

Even the president urged us to stop the glorification

of violence in our society, including

“the gruesome and grisly video games that

are now commonplace.”

Let’s debunk this whole “video games causes violence”

red herring once and for all.

I’m Charle Goldberg.

I’ve been reporting on video games for eight years.

I’ve been a lifelong video game player.

I have amassed nearly two million subscribers

on my gaming YouTube channel.

And, well, I play a lot of video games.

The violent ones, the shooter ones more specifically.

I also love LEGOs.

I’m a father.

I know I’m just one gamer, but I’m not a threat to society

and neither are the millions of other people

who play video games.

Let’s take a look at the world of evidence.

American video game sales per person are on similar levels

to countries like South Korea, Japan, or Germany.

But our rate of violent gun deaths is 10 to 100 times

higher than any of those countries’.

Even within America, there is zero empirical evidence

that video games are linked to mass shootings.

Decades of research from the American Psychological

Association have shown there’s no link between playing

violent video games and participating

in violent crime.

This all looks nominal.

No link, no evidence.

Now, it’s true that some research shows a relationship

between video games and aggression,

but aggression is also linked to lots of things, including

organized sports.

Now, maybe you’re thinking, what about Columbine.

Didn’t the two shooters in that also play

the violent video game Doom?

And yes, they did,

but violent criminals also watch

movies, they read books and digest the news, real or fake.

As one A.P.A. expert put it, “The data on bananas causing suicide

is about as conclusive.”

In fact, in 2017 an A.P.A. committee

issued a statement discouraging politicians

and journalists from trying to connect video games

and shootings precisely because they feared

the rhetoric would distract us from addressing issues

that we know contribute to real-world violence.

So why, against the objections of science and ethics,

do politicians still insist on deflecting our attention?

Because it’s easy.

It works.

And it’s time tested.

In 1915, the Supreme Court supported

censorship of movies because they could “cause evil.”

Film didn’t become a form of protected speech

until the ’50s,

just when politicians turned their energies

to a new scapegoat —

comic books. Now fast-forward to the paranoias

about heavy metal in the 1960s, Dungeons

and Dragons in the ’80s,

hip-hop in the ’90s.

“Here we go again.”

Solutions are hard and we like simple answers

to complicated questions.

And it doesn’t take much to get disgruntled parents

frustrated by their kids’ screen time

and Fortnite addiction to believe that video games are evil.

The fact that politicians are so removed from video game culture

is another reason we should ignore their deflections.

Would you listen to a book critic

who’s never read a book?

“Shut your pie hole.” And just like books,

video games are actually an art form protected

by the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court made that clear in 2011

when Justice Scalia reminded us that violence is not

novel to gaming.

It’s as old as the plots of Cinderella and Snow White.

Gamers don’t really have an issue deciphering

fantasy from the real world.

But politicians seem to have lost themselves

in a politically convenient fiction.

Just when we need them to focus

on the crisis of our reality.