Since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, and even before that, researchers have been studying the effects of playing violent video games. What they've found is simply put: Playing violent video games doesn't lead to real-life violent acts.
"Recent research has shown that as video games have become more popular, children in the United States and Europe are having fewer behavior problems, are less violent and score better on standardized tests," Christopher J. Ferguson, a psychology professor at Texas A&M International University, wrote in the science journal Review of General Psychology back in 2010. "Violent video games have not created the generation of problem youth so often feared."
In 2017, the American Psychological Association outright warned against journalists and lawmakers connecting real-life violence with video-game violence:
"Journalists and policy makers do their constituencies a disservice in cases where they link acts of real-world violence with the perpetrators' exposure to violent video games or other violent media. There's little scientific evidence to support the connection, and it may distract us from addressing those issues that we know contribute to real-world violence."
When the APA looked at various studies of violent video games and whether playing them had any relation to aggressive acts, it found "scant evidence ... that makes any causal or correlational connection between playing violent video games and actually committing violent activities."
Speaking to the New York Times this week, Ferguson, now a psychology professor at Stetson University, summed up the data succinctly: "The data on bananas causing suicide is about as conclusive. Literally. The numbers work out about the same."