VIDEOGAMES REDUCE CRIME

http://www.macleans.ca/society/the-real-reason-crime-is-falling-so-fast/?google_editors_picks=true

"As our lives move from meatspace to cyberspace, the opportunity for violent crime and acquisitive crime change and reduce in the aggregate, and that's what I think has happened."

The gist of the article is that there is a substantive drop in crime in the 18-24yo group, the group responsible for the most crime historically, which is contributing to drops in the national crime rate. A theory behind it is that more and more people in that age group are spending more time online or playing videogames. Though the theory is still considered "speculative and correlational."

And it’s not only crime; rising rates of technology use also correlate with a drop in other undesirable behaviours. Research has suggested that the same forces have helped to discourage young people from risky sex, drug use and aggression. The post-Millennial demographic known as Generation Z, defined loosely as those born after 1995, is known to be better-behaved than their older peers. As they enter their late teens, the most likely age of criminal inclination, Gen Z youths are smoking less, graduating more, having fewer pregnancies, and committing fewer robberies, car thefts and murders.

Generation Z - the nice generation.


The article also mentions that there could be a decrease in crime due to the deterrence factor - crimes are more likely to be caught on video or reported due to the ubiquity of mobile phones.

Since “debut crimes” such as car thefts and shoplifting have become more difficult, young people may be less likely to start a criminal career in the first place, he says. “That might be the stepping stone to why some violent crimes have gone down,” Farrell says. He’s also skeptical that video games, social media and smartphones contributed to the crime drop, which began in 1991, before Google and texting and before Gen Z was even born.

An interesting tidbit... but wasn't that drop in crime attributed to the legalization of abortion?

Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago and John Donohue of Yale University revived discussion of this claim with their 2001 paper "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime". Donohue and Levitt point to the fact that males aged 18 to 24 are most likely to commit crimes. Data indicates that crime in the United States started to decline in 1992. Donohue and Levitt suggest that the absence of unwanted children, following legalization in 1973, led to a reduction in crime 18 years later, starting in 1992 and dropping sharply in 1995. These would have been the peak crime-committing years of the unborn children.

anywho, this is an interesting theory. Keep making games to continue making the world a safer place!

author=Alichains
It was also attributed to the drop in lead in the environment.

I hadn't heard that one!

You could read the study. Or wikipedia page. Or Freakonomics. But the gist of the abortion causation was that people who would benefit most from abortions such as teens or singles or low incomes got an abortion instead of raising a kid as a single teen mom living in poverty. And sadly there is a link between kids raised in poor conditions and crime. :(

Its been years since I read Freakonomics though so there are probably other pertinent details. Also also there have been counter studies published.