> mass school shootings are almost exclusively a modern concept from the last 30 years. A question one might ask is then what changed in the USA during those years to trigger this.
The invention of the first person shooter (aka: the mass shooting simulator.) 30 years almost to the day.
As the other commenter said: violent games are popular all over the world, but it's only the US with the gun problem. So I think they can be safely crossed off the list.
Also there's numerous studies that have come out over the past 20 years showing there's little to no connection between virtual violence and real violence. If anything, they help as an outlet. Google is your friend here.
Finally, Jack Thompson is a good cautionary tale of what happens when you let your tyrannical crusade overwhelm you to the point of destroying your career. Don't be a Jack Thompson. Violent games are very far down on the list of things to address regarding the US gun problem.
Have there been any studies specifically on the effects of violent video games on the mentally ill?
afaik the studies are all investigating whether video games make the average person violent or if they increase population-level violence and obviously they don't because until very recently violent crime has been at all-time lows.
> but it's only the US with the gun problem
Because we have guns. We all know this. But we've always had guns, and only recently have had mass shootings. So something else is at work here.
It's bizarre to me that so many tech people think we need to regulate speech, and news, and social media because it makes people do things they otherwise would not, but then they have this special carve-out for what are essentially mass shooting simulators, which they believe have absolutely no effect on anyone.
Disclaimer: I'm not advocating for any policy here.
The invention of the first person shooter (aka: the mass shooting simulator.) 30 years almost to the day.