[pembrook]

I think it's super interesting that the "violent videos games" moral panic is basically non-existent as a mainstream narrative these days.

Yet, both time spent playing videos games per young male and school shootings have risen dramatically over the last two decades.

So you would think that particular moral panic would be at its peak, given how much moral panickers claim to care about "the data" (basically correlation = causation fallacies, but still).

Which basically suggests these are just memetic hysterias that run their course. Once all the eyeballs and ad dollars have been squeezed out of the narrative, the narrative dies. Nobody actually cares about looking too closely at the supposed "data" or whether said correlation is actually true. I'd bet a large sum of money this is where the smartphones/social media/etc. panics will end up as well.