this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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It's not quite NO evidence. I would say that it's very weak evidence of a minor effect. For example: https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2000/04/video-games
It's a nuanced point where the people who complain that video games are ruining society should be completely ignored, but things like age ratings on games are probably a good idea.
I think part of the nuance may be that people who already have violent tendencies might gravitate towards more violent video games. In that regard it may be an indicator of existing violent urges but the game being the cause of violent behavior in otherwise non-violent tending people seems not to have any hard evidence.
It's very easy to correlate a lot of things. Particularly if weak correlation is sufficient. For example, what do you think we'd get if we tried to correlate murderers with cheese consumption?
I would suggest using the word evidence very carefully. Particularly in a scientific context.
Except age rating is a joke - especially 18+. I get that many games are violent, contain sex scenes, drugs etc., but in my eyes 18 is a barrier when you become responsible for your actions, which would imply playing 18+ games is dangerous like alcohol and cigarettes, while it's just a PEGI's way of saying "Somebody said fuck several times".
Like Witcher 3 obviously fits into 18+, but not because it's should be 18+, but we got used to these games being 18+. At the age of 14 in school I was required to read Sapkowski's novels, but god forbid you play Witcher 3.
No informed person I know takes the numbers seriously for ESRB. They often do look at the rating, but they don't consider the "17 and up" rating to actually mean 17 and up.
Even my own parents who honestly could barely understand video games still understood that the ratings were heavily inflated. I mean, I remember being I think 13 and my dad being like "you're finally old enough to watch an R rated movie with me if you'd like". Video games were similar. For my family, once I was about 13 or so, I was considered old enough for M (17+) rated games.