Despite no evidence linking video games to violence, folks keep insisting that all them vidya gamehs are to blame for horrible tragedies like school shootings. As it turns out, the reason why this is may have less to do with gaming and more to do with racial stereotyping.
According to a study by the American Psychological Association, researchers found that people were more likely to blame a school shooting on video games if the perpetrator was white than when the perpetrator is black.
The study comprised of two components. The first involved having 169 participants read a mock news story on a school shooting and researchers found that people were more likely to blame video games as the underlying cause when the shooter was white.
The second component involved examining 204,796 news stories of 204 mass shootings that took place after 1977 – the year when gaming really took off with the release of the Atari 2600. The results found that video games were mentioned 8.35 times more frequently when the shooter was white than when they were black.
But perhaps the most interesting finding in this racial stereotyping study is just how little video games are actually discussed in the news overall when a school shooting happens.
Researcher found that news articles referenced video games 6.8% of the time when a white person is the perpetrator of a school shooting compared to the mere 0.5% of the time if it was a black person.
While this result definitely suggests racial stereotyping, it also shows just how much people – especially politicians – like to loudly scapegoat video games as the cause of shootings rather than diving into the real underlying problems.
In addition to how racial stereotyping is definitely a factor in why video games get blamed for school shootings, the study pulls the curtain back on the undercurrent of racism that still exists. This is best summarised by this paragraph from the study:
“Such [racial] stereotyping may lead people to accept school shootings committed by Black perpetrators without explanation but seek explanations (such as violent video games) for the potential causes of school shootings when conflicted with the stereotypical perceptions of what a violent person looks like—such as when a perpetrator is White.”
So next time people try once again to pin a US school shooting on video games, not only are they trying to avoid actual important issues like gun control, they’re also probably a little racist as well.