On October 22, 2001, millions of gamers got an entirely new way to wreak havoc: Grand Theft Auto III. In the landmark video game, players could hit pedestrians with cars, shoot rockets at police, and rob and steal to their hearts content. And that’s just scratching the surface of all the audacious crimes one could commit in the game’s explorable world, Liberty City.
The backlash was tremendous. Lawsuits accused the makers of the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) franchise, Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive, of inspiring real-life murders and assaults. Parents and pundits fretted that the GTA series and other hyperviolent franchises such as Doom and Call of Duty promoted actual violence—a worry that, at the time, was backed by numerous high-profile scientific papers.
The furor wasn’t enough to kill GTA. And now, almost a quarter-century later, gamers are anxiously awaiting the next installment in the franchise, Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6). Yet even though it has a new extended trailer out on Netflix that shows all sorts of fresh crime scenes, the game is generating far less anxiety today than its predecessors did before.
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The lack of moral panic is in some ways proportional to the actual danger. Yet what’s inescapable is that numerous scientific studies published in the past 30 years do suggest a link between violent video games and aggression. But that doesn’t mean the connection should be overstated—and evidence suggesting the opposite also can’t be ignored.
“Exposure to violent media, including violent video games, is not the only risk factor, and it’s not even the most important risk factor,” says Brad Bushman, a professor at the Ohio State University, who previously served on former president Barack Obama’s committee on gun violence.
“Probably the most important risk factor is provocation. If you provoke somebody, they’re very likely to respond in an aggressive way, whereas if they play a violent video game, maybe they will, maybe they won’t,” he says. People’s socioeconomic status, IQ score, alcohol consumption, and level of narcissistic traits and even hot temperatures can all influence violent behavior, he adds.
Chris Ferguson, a psychology professor at Stetson University, has conducted research finding that while video games can stress players out, that doesn’t necessarily lead to aggressive behavior.
Anyone who has ever played an online shooter knows the experience can be frustrating. Ferguson says playing games can affect emotional states, but the effects don’t tend to last.
“To the extent that people may have an emotional reaction to a game, it doesn’t usually last that long because it doesn’t matter,” he says.
Still, Bushman argues, the evidence suggests that these supposedly fleeting frustrations do matter. Research needs to account for how aggressive a person is to begin with to get a better picture of how a video game might influence them, he says.
“People who play violent video games become numb to violent images, their brain activity is reduced, and they think aggression is no big deal,” Bushman says. “If aggression is no big deal, then they don’t have such a problem aggressing against other people.”
If video games do cause violence, it’s not showing up in crime statistics. Violent crime in the U.S. has generally been in decline for decades: in 2025 the estimated murder rate was 4.1 per 100,000 people, the same as in 1955, according to FBI statistics. And the overall violent crime rate fell by 49 percent between 1993 and 2022, according to the Pew Research Center. That’s the same time period that saw a dramatic rise in the popularity of video games, culminating in 85 percent of teens saying they played video games in a poll conducted by Pew in late 2023. More than half of the poll’s respondents said that at least some of the games they played contained violent imagery.
“Why do we have this historical moment where we’re the most violent-video-game-playing we’ve ever been and the least violent-crime-committing we’ve been?” Ferguson muses.
Bushman, however, thinks video games may still be propping crime rates up. “I would argue that violent crime rates would be even lower” without violent video games, he says.
At the height of the panic over GTA 3 and other violent games, the fear was that the games would create a generation of children intent on re-creating what they had done in the games in real life. In the early 1990s Congress held hearings following the success of the ultragory Mortal Kombat, leading to a ratings system that, while not legally binding, is designed to limit children under age 17’s access to games with mature themes.
Those concerns have faded in the face of the psychological effects of cell phones and social media on adolescents, Ferguson notes. Researchers have also shifted their focus, with some looking at whether video games might have positive psychological and emotional effects. A growing body of literature shows that, under the right conditions, gaming may encourage prosocial behavior, although the connection to well-being remains unclear.
Regardless, video games can be “brilliant teachers,” Bushman says. But they’re also tools that, like many others, can be misused. “Video games are like an axe,” he says. “You can use an axe to cut down wood for your family to build a fire when it’s cold, or you can use an axe to kill someone.”
