LETTER: Violent video games are contributing to increases in violent crime

It has many times been surmised that there is a connection between crime and violent video games. Perhaps the recent surge of increasingly violent video games, which were played far more often due to stay-at-home orders and the lockdown, and the massive surge in violent crime have a more than coincidental relationship.

According to NPR, homicide rates rose 30 percent in 2020 alone. The homicide rate has continued to rise.

While video games cannot shoulder all the blame for this, they certainly are a large contributor. Studies have shown that people playing video games often start to reflect the character they play and become increasingly immersed in a world that sometimes seems very real to them.

Apart from creating social problems, violent video games act like virtual reality training, desensitizing impressionable people to blood, gore, violence and killing. I am not some video game hater, I happen to enjoy playing now and then. But this is a big problem nowadays. It needs to be addressed.