Teenage boys that normally would have been running around in the streets committing entry level crimes are now glued to their Xbox. The declines in crime also happen to correlate with the ubiquitousness and availability of video games. As they get cheaper and more violent, crime goes down.
I really like your argument but I remember how ubiquitous the SNES, Sega Genesis and PS1 were in the 90s. I do wonder what role the quality of graphics plays here too (especially with regards to portraying violence).
Games in the 90s did cost more than AAA titles today but not by a huge amount and the hardware was similarly priced. Maybe it just took a couple more decades for gaming to be considered a truly mainstream activity rather than something for the geekier kids.
> I remember how ubiquitous the SNES, Sega Genesis and PS1 were in the 90s
They weren't "ubiquitous" for poor kids. For those kids, there was no way they would get their parents to buy us anything for (the 1991 equivalent of) $350 and $85/game.
Nobody assumed that upper middle class kids were normally carrying out burglaries...
My dad sold my SNES and Final Fantasy II for money to keep his kids fed. Poor kids didn't necessarily have shit back then, and certainly the used game market wasn't as available as it is now.
The big difference between games then and games today is the rise of multiplayer games. Gaming today is a much more social activity. I suspect that this is the primary reason why it's more mainstream and more addicting.
I really like your argument but I remember how ubiquitous the SNES, Sega Genesis and PS1 were in the 90s. I do wonder what role the quality of graphics plays here too (especially with regards to portraying violence).
Games in the 90s did cost more than AAA titles today but not by a huge amount and the hardware was similarly priced. Maybe it just took a couple more decades for gaming to be considered a truly mainstream activity rather than something for the geekier kids.