Study Shows Violent Video Games Can Reduce Crime Rates

With all the controversy and stigmatism surrounding video games, it’s refreshing to hear some positive outcomes from the beloved pastime.

A new study from the Villanova University and Rutgers University has revealed that violent video games can actually help reduce crime rates, as opposed to increase them, as many would like to believe.

Patrick Markey, co-author of the study, explained that playing violent video games doesn’t mean that the user will be encouraged to be violent in the real-world.

“We always have to be careful with correlational data. Correlation doesn’t mean causation. But we haven’t just looked at sales of games and violent crimes. We have taken into account trends in the data. We remove stuff that typically happens, like a spike in murders during summer and high sales of games near the Holidays, and it’s still negative. To me what is most amazing is that is never positive. It is always statistically negative.”

While it’s found that the number of criminal activities seem to drop at the time when AAA titles like Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty are released, Markey also emphasises that the findings don’t necessarily mean that the absence of violent video games will result in high crime rate either.

Source: via Polygon