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Steve sent me short story, Do Video Games Equal Less Crime?. The story raises the possibility that the drop in crime rates is due to increased video game usage. Video games might be cathartic. Unfortunately, Anderson, in the science brief I blogged last has a fairly thorough answer to this possibility:

Myth 11. If violent video games cause increases in aggression, violent crime rates in the U.S. would be increasing instead of decreasing.
Facts: Three assumptions must all be true for this myth to be valid: (a) exposure to violent media (including video games) is increasing; (b) youth violent crime rates are decreasing; (c) video game violence is the only (or the primary) factor contributing to societal violence. The first assumption is probably true. The second is not true, as reported by the 2001 Report of the Surgeon General on Youth Violence (Figure 2-7, p. 25). The third is clearly untrue. Media violence is only one of many factors that contribute to societal violence and is certainly not the most important one. Media violence researchers have repeatedly noted this.

Note, however, that for Anderson media violence (including violent games) is “certainly not” the most important contributing factor. (I wonder what the others are?)

I should add that in Freakonomics it is argued that legalized abortion led to the drop in crime rates.

I came across a Science Brief from the American Psychological Association to the effect that it is a myth that there is no good evidence linking video games and violence. The brief by Craig A. Anderson is titled, Violent Video Games: Myths, Facts, and Unanswered Questions, (October 2003.)

Some studies have yielded nonsignificant video game effects, just as some smoking studies failed to find a significant link to lung cancer. But when one combines all relevant empirical studies using meta-analytic techniques, five separate effects emerge with considerable consistency. Violent video games are significantly associated with: increased aggressive behavior, thoughts, and affect; increased physiological arousal; and decreased prosocial (helping) behavior. Average effect sizes for experimental studies (which help establish causality) and correlational studies (which allow examination of serious violent behavior) appear comparable (Anderson & Bushman, 2001).

How will it change game studies if there is increasing evidence that violent video games lead to aggressive behaviour? What would it mean for those of us fascinated by games if games become the smoking of the next generation? Anderson concludes by calling for more research on large scale effects – as in whether violent media leads to subcultures or nations behaving more aggressively.

Finally, more research is needed to: (a) refine emerging general models of human aggression; (b) delineate the processes underlying short and long term media violence effects; (c) broaden these models to encompass aggression at the level of subcultures and nations. Several different research groups around the world are working on these various issues.