People In The 1980s Genuinely Thought Dungeons & Dragons Could Kill Their Kids

But it was a very different time in the early 1980s. Kids didn’t yet have the endless list of “bad influences” they’d have later. Forget TikTok and social media — most kids didn’t even have home video games. And if you were lucky enough to have an Atari 2600 or Commodore 64, the games were incredibly basic. Cable TV was still new (MTV didn’t launch until late 1981), and VCRs weren’t yet standard.

If you’re wondering: yes, that is why we spent so much time outside riding bikes. 

So in that world, you can see how parents might’ve side-eyed a game where kids gathered in basements, rolled weird dice, talked about magic spells, and pretended to summon demons.