This might seem odd as the rioting was started by the police execution of a teenager at a traffic stop and is more widely understood to be a problem caused by poverty and uneven policing in rioting areas. Indeed rioting has been part of French culture since the revolution and whenever the government does something unpopular there is always a good riot.

However, that has not stopped Macron from blaming computer games.

It sometimes feels like some of them are experiencing, on the streets, the video games that have intoxicated them," Macron said.
He added that protesters are using Snapchat and TikTok to organise themselves and spread "a mimicking of violence, which for the youngest leads to a kind of disconnect from reality."

Concerns that video games promote shootings, massacres or rioting are now about half a century old; it has been traced back to the 1976 release of Death Race, an arcade video game which put players behind the wheel of a car to mow down humanoid figures for points.

The argument gained renewed traction in the 1990s with the release of much more realistic first-person shooter games. However, shedloads of studies have proven that there is no causal link between video games and violent behaviour. Violent crime in the US dropped significantly between 1993 and 2020, during which violent video games soared in popularity.

Christopher Ferguson, a professor at Stetson University in Florida who has studied the impact of such games on the public, said he is surprised at Macron's comments. The president is 45 years old and belongs to a generation raised with video games, so "seeing him mention this is almost anachronistic."

Ferguson said it is a way for elected leaders to shift the blame away from failing government policies. "It gets people talking about the wrong thing. They're thinking about video games. They're not thinking about gun control or whatever inequalities are happening in France," Ferguson said.