The DeanBeat: The gray areas of video game violence and addiction

When President Donald Trump met with video game leaders about violence in games in March 2018, the industry worried he would use games as a scapegoat for mass shootings. Instead, Trump showed his cards to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida). After the game industry made its case — that the U.S. is the only country where mass shootings happen so frequently while games are global — Trump said to Rubio, “We got a problem, Marco, and it’s not these guys.”

Fast-forward to last week, in the wake of the shootings in El Paso and Dayton that left more than 80 people dead, Trump said video games have created a culture of “the glorification of violence in our society,” and that has to stop. The game industry repeated its talking points about how research showed no connection between violence in games and in the world.