Do video games make children violent? Nobody knows – and this is why

The sorry state of research into one of the world's biggest entertainment industries is leaving us in the dark

In 1976, the driving simulation Death Race was removed from an Illinois amusement park. There had, according to a news story at the time, been complaints that it encouraged players to run over pedestrians to score points. Through a series of subsequent newspaper reports, the US National Safety Council labelled the game "gross" and motoring groups demanded its removal from distribution. The first moral panic over video game violence had begun.

This January, a group of four scholars published a paper analysing the links between playing violent video games at a young age and aggressive behaviour in later life. The titles mentioned in the report are around 15-years-old - one of several troubling ambiguities to be found in the research. Nevertheless, the quality and quantity of the data make this an uncommonly valuable study. Given that game violence remains a favoured bogeyman for politicians, press and pressure groups, it should be shocking that such a robust study of the phenomenon is rare. But it is, and it's important to ask why.