Are Electrons Driving Us Crazy?

By

Howard Bloom

To understand why we are going crazy, you have to understand a basic principle.  Parents love to trash the technologies their kid’s flash. 

In the 1990s, gory, blood and guts videogames were booming.  And adults blamed those games for the violence and crime in society. 

In 1992 and 1993 there were Senate hearings about Mortal Kombat—a blood-drenched video game that urged you to outbattle an opponent then commanded you to “finish him’ and encouraged you to rip out his heart and tear off his head with his spinal cord still dangling.

In 1997 came Grand Theft Auto, a game in which you stole cars, shot policemen, and saw their blood spurt.  A game in which you could mow down entire lines of Hare Krishna followers peacefully walking in single file down the sidewalk. You could also jump the curb and splatter ordinary citizens.  And topping all that, you could kill the emergency responders who showed up to clean up the mess you had made.

Social commentators like anti-game activist Jack Thompson denounced Grand Theft Auto vehemently.  Thompson called Grand Theft Auto a “murder simulator.”  Grand Theft Auto, the pundits said, was going to poison the minds of kids and turn them into violent thugs.  One of those critics was Hillary Clinton.

But was that true?  Did Mortal Kombat, Grand Theft Auto and the single person shooter games like them boost crime rates?  No.  Just the opposite. 

1993, the year of Mortal Kombat, was the year when crime started to drop.  Then came Grand Theft Auto and the crime rate fell even farther. In fact from 1993 to 2024 violent victimization has dropped by 71%.  That is a huge, almost unbelievable improvement.  It means that today you are 6% more likely to have a life with no criminal violence as you would have been in 1973. 

Criminologists call this The Great Crime Decline, the largest and longest sustained drop in serious crime since World War II.

But do we Americans see that radical boost in our domestic peace?  Not at all.  Ever since 1993, between 60% and 78% of us have been absolutely certain that crime was worse this year—no matter what year it was– than it was a year ago.  And in almost all of those 32 years, crime was actually down. 

Tremendously down. 

In other words, things were looking up and we simply failed to see it.  So the insanity may not be in the increase in the world’s craziness.  It may be in the very way we see.  Why?

There’s a slew of reasons.  Here’s one of them.  Every new generation of toys for teens seems threatening to parents.  The new playthings are radically different than the toys parents grew up with.  So surely they must be evil. 

Today the new toys for teens are smart phones, Tik-Tok, Facebook, and Instagram.  And those toys may soon include artificial intelligence.  These electronic companions are driving parents wild. 

Could they be 2026’s equivalent of blood-and-guts videogames?  Could they actually bring more blessings than curses? 

I’m convinced the answer is yes.

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About the author: Howard Bloom of the Howard Bloom Institute has been called the Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV. Bloom’s new book is The Case of the Sexual Cosmos: Everything You Know About Nature is Wrong. Says Harvard’s Ellen Langer of The Case of the Sexual Cosmos, Bloom “argues that we are not savaging the earth as some would have it, but instead are growing the cosmos. A fascinating read.” One of Bloom’s eight previous books–Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT.  Bloom’s work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American. Not to mention in scientific journals like Biosystems, New Ideas in Psychology, and PhysicaPlus. Says Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Evolution’s End and The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, “I have finished Howard Bloom’s [first two] books, The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain, in that order, and am seriously awed, near overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he has done. I never expected to see, in any form, from any sector, such an accomplishment.  I doubt there is a stronger intellect than Bloom’s on the planet.”   For more, see http://howardbloom.net or http://howardbloom.institute

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References:

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Brenan, Megan. “Americans’ Views of Crime in the U.S. Improve.” Gallup, November 16, 2023. https://news.gallup.com/poll/544442/americans-crime-problem-serious.aspx.

Jones, Jeffrey M. “More Americans See U.S. Crime Problem as Serious.” Gallup, November 16, 2023. https://news.gallup.com/poll/544442/americans-crime-problem-serious.aspx

Cunningham, A. Scott, Benjamin Engelstätter, and Michael R. Ward. “Violent Video Games and Violent Crime.” Southern Economic Journal 82, no. 4 (2016): 1247–1265. https://doi.org/10.1002/soej.12139.

The Economist. “Is Europe Safer than America?” August 9, 2026. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2026/08/09/is-europe-safer-than-america.

Gallup. “Crime.” Gallup Historical Trends. Accessed August 12, 2026. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1603/crime.aspx.

Gramlich, John. “What the Data Says About Crime in the U.S.” Pew Research Center, April 24, 2024. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-data-says-about-crime-in-the-us/.

Tapp, Susannah N., and Emilie J. Coen. Criminal Victimization, 2024. Bureau of Justice Statistics Report, NCJ 310547. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, September 2025. https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/criminal-victimization-2024.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Rating Video Games: A Parent’s Guide to Games: Joint Hearings before the Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice of the Committee on the Judiciary and the Subcommittee on Regulation and Government Information of the Committee on Governmental Affairs. 103rd Cong., 1st sess., December 9, 1993, March 4 and July 29, 1994. S. Hrg. 103-887. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice of the Committee on the Judiciary and the Subcommittee on Education, Arts, and Humanities of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources. 103rd Cong., 1st sess., December 9, 1993. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1993. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-103shrg103522/pdf/CHRG-103shrg103522.pdf.