RFK Jr. Says Mass Shootings Might Be Related to Video Video games—What Data Shows

U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has advised a causal hyperlink between mass shootings and the enjoying of video video games, although numerous research through the years have did not definitively join the 2 relating to a proliferation of violence.

Newsweek reached out to HHS by way of e mail for remark.

Why It Matters

The Make America Healthy Again [MAHA] Commission on Tuesday launched its Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy, described as a sweeping plan with greater than 120 initiatives to reverse the failed insurance policies that fueled America’s childhood power illness epidemic. Targeted government actions embrace to advance gold-standard science, realign incentives, enhance public consciousness and strengthen private-sector collaboration, per the HHS.

Kennedy has acquired criticism for a way he is led HHS, together with firing over 600 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention workers and exhibiting an ambivalence towards vaccines and vaccine mandates that final week even drew consternation from some Senate Republicans who challenged the previous unbiased presidential candidate on not following via on his previous assurances.

What To Know

Upon unveiling the brand new 20-page MAHA report on Tuesday, Kennedy was requested by PBS News whether or not the fee has had any dialogue on the relation between youngsters’s psychological well being and firearms.

“The firearms question is a complex question, and it’s not an easy question,” Kennedy replied.

The well being secretary pointed to a “sudden onset of violence” within the Nineteen Nineties when “somebody walks into a school or a church or a theater and starts shooting strangers.”

“We’re having mass shootings every 23 hours,” he mentioned, mentioning attainable causes as dependence on psychiatric medicine, video video games or social media. He mentioned the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is inspecting such root causes.

He didn’t elaborate on why he introduced up video video games, or what the connection might imply within the grander scheme of the dialog surrounding well being and security.

“We are initiating studies now that look at the correlation and the potential connection between overmedicating our kids and this violence,” he added.

What Studies Show

Kennedy’s connection between violence and video video games is an argument that has been round for many years, changing into extra a part of the zeitgeist as gun violence and mass shootings have remained constant within the United States.

But any hyperlinks he or different lawmakers and advocates make haven’t been instantly borne out of the info. Numerous scientific research haven’t discovered a hyperlink between violent video video games and mass shootings, in accordance with the American Psychological Association (APA).

APA analysis printed in 2019 within the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture analyzed greater than 200,000 information articles about 204 mass shootings over a 40-year interval, discovering that video video games have been eight instances extra more likely to be talked about when the capturing occurred at a faculty and the perpetrator was a white male than when the shooter was a Black male. Another experiment performed with school college students arrived at comparable conclusions.

Another 2019 examine printed by JAMA concerned a randomized scientific trial exploring whether or not youngsters’s publicity to a violent online game will increase harmful conduct round firearms.

The trial concerned 220 youngsters ages 8 to 12, assigned to play a online game in one in every of three circumstances: with gun violence, with sword violence or with no violence. Compared with youngsters who performed a sport that was nonviolent, youngsters who performed a online game that included violence with weapons or swords have been extra more likely to contact an actual, disabled handgun, deal with a handgun longer and pull the set off extra instances—together with at themselves or their associate.

Reported routine publicity to violent media was additionally a threat issue for harmful conduct round firearms, researchers famous.

A examine from Oxford that very same 12 months discovered no correlation between aggression in teenagers and the time spent enjoying violent video video games.

“Our findings suggest that researcher biases might have influenced previous studies on this topic, and have distorted our understanding of the effects of video games,” examine co-author Dr. Netta Weinstein mentioned.

One 12 months later, Ofir Turel, professor of knowledge programs and resolution sciences at Cal State Fullerton, theorized that video-gaming and bringing a gun to high school have a U-shaped affiliation reasonably than a linear one.

Even going again to 2004, outcomes have diverse and direct hyperlinks between video video games and violence have been blended. A examine copublished that 12 months by the U.S. Secret Service and Department of Education discovered that over half of attackers demonstrated some curiosity in violence via films, video video games, books and different media.

“However, there was no one common type of interest in violence indicated,” the examine mentioned. “Instead, the attackers’ interest in violent themes took various forms.”

Lack of Data Proves ‘Invalid’ Claim

David Dupee, adjunct professor at Stanford University, has explored whether or not there is a hyperlink between violence and video video games.

In a 2023 op-ed for Fortune, he spoke of how he and the Stanford Brainstorm lab reviewed 82 medical analysis articles pertaining to any form of causal hyperlink between enjoying video video games and violent conduct. They discovered none.

Dupee informed Newsweek by way of telephone on Wednesday that he is “not surprised” Kennedy introduced up video video games, saying that politicians have tried to make the connection for the previous twenty years with out a lot proof, if any.

“There’s a lot of work that’s done looking at correlations, but anyone with the basic grasp of statistics knows that the correlation and causation are two different things entirely,” Dupee mentioned. “I’m not surprised to see this be kind of raised back to the top of the bin, so to speak, once again. But there hasn’t been any new data that suggests that Secretary Kennedy’s take is valid.”

The argument in itself is compelling, Dupee mentioned, however that does not imply it is correct. He talked about how first-person shooter video video games, which embrace the favored Call of Duty franchise, have offered hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide for years.

“They’re sold very well everywhere, seemingly, and the United States, far and away, has the highest rate of mass shootings or school shootings,” he mentioned. “Specifically, if you want to kind of drill down on that and what differs between these different places is not necessarily the penetrance of video games so much as the availability of firearms.

“We can look to, say, Switzerland as a spot that has equally excessive gun possession, however fairly strenuous guidelines and rules round being licensed for firearms who can truly get them doing good background checks. And we simply do not have those self same safeguards in locations right here within the states.”

What People Are Saying

President Donald Trump, in 2019: “We should cease the glorification of violence in our society. This contains the ugly and grisly video video games that are actually commonplace. It is just too simple at this time for troubled youth to encompass themselves with a tradition that celebrates violence. We should cease or considerably scale back this, and it has to start instantly.”

Lead researcher Patrick Markey, psychology professor at Villanova University, regarding his 2019 study published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture: “When a violent act is carried out by somebody who does not match the racial stereotype of what a violent particular person seems like, individuals have a tendency to hunt an exterior rationalization for the violent conduct.

“When a white child from the suburbs commits a horrific violent act like a school shooting, then people are more likely to erroneously blame video games than if the child was African American.”

What Happens Next

Kennedy’s insurance policies on deterring violence, in addition to these pertaining to vaccines, scientific analysis and grants, and mass layoffs at main well being companies, will proceed to be carefully watched within the months forward.