Yesterday, Senator Jay Rockefeller introduced a bill calling on the National Academy of Sciences to “study” video game violence on children. Speaking of the recent Brown v. EMA Supreme Court decision, which criticized the existing research as inconsistent and methodologically flawed, Rockefeller stated, “Recent court decisions demonstrate that some people still do not get it. They believe that violent video games are no more dangerous to young minds than classic literature or Saturday morning cartoons. Parents, pediatricians and psychologists know better. These court decisions show we need to do more and explore ways Congress can lay additional groundwork on this issue. This report will be a critical resource in this process.” (MORE: Sandy Hook Shooting: Why Did Lanza Target a School?) The Sandy Hook tragedy has torn our nation’s heart, probably more than any other crime I can remember. But by advertising the desired results before any study has even begun, Senator Rockefeller is in classic moral panic mode. As a video game violence researcher and someone who has done scholarship on mass homicides, let me state very emphatically: There is no good evidence that video games or other media contributes, even in a small way, to mass homicides or any other violence among youth. Our research lab recently published new prospective results with teens in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence indicating that exposure to video game violence neither increased aggressive behaviors, nor decreased prosocial behaviors. Whitney Gunter and Kevin Daly recently published a large study of children in Computers in Human Behavior which found video game violence effects to be inconsequential with other factors controlled. And as for the notion of that violent media “desensitizes” users, recent results published by my student Raul Ramos found that exposure to violence on screen had no influence on viewer empathy for victims of real violence. (A study published by Holly Bowen and Julia Spaniol in Applied Cognitive Psychology similarly found no evidence for a desensitization effect for video games.) Finally, a review of the literature by the Swedish government in 2012 has joined the … Continue reading Sandy Hook Shooting: Video Games Blamed, Again