Technology's connection to recent shootings

I was thinking about writing a column about the “tech angle” of the Buffalo shooting but wound up changing subjects at the last minute. Unfortunately, the topic is back in the news because of the horrific slaughter of innocent children in Texas.

To be clear, technology isn't to blame for these shootings. It was bullets — not bytes — that took the lives of 10 people in Buffalo and 21 people, including 19 elementary school students, in Uvalde, Texas. Still, some are blaming video games and social media, along with mental illness. And there are some who claim that social media is causing a breakdown in mental health that's leading to mass shootings.

It is appropriate to revisit the data on the relationship between violent video games and aggressive behavior, but based on what we know at this point, such games are not a major factor. I'm all for increasing funding for mental health programs, but, according to the 2019 report of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Global Burden of Disease, mental illness is the U.S. is very close to that of countries where the mass shooting rate is much lower. Australia and New Zealand, which have seen a significant reduction in gun violence, both had a higher reported rate of mental illness than the United States.

Violent video games

Some are blaming violent video games for these shootings, but as a policy document from a division of the American Psychological Association put it, “Scant evidence has emerged that makes any causal or correlational connection between playing violent video games and actually committing violent activities.” That's not to say that such games are necessarily appropriate for all children and teens, nor does it belie data suggesting that such games can cause aggressive behavior shortly after playing, but as the late justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his majority Supreme