What a question huh? Problem is the answer to that question requires time to pass.
I believe enough time has passed and the answer is already evident. I also believe the violence we see today is a fitting illustration of the question of whether or not life imitates art, or art imitating life. It actually goes both ways. For instance if you look at the military, they've patterned some of their training off of popular video games such as Doom, and Wolfenstein. At the same time, you look at the creators of those video games, and arguably we could state they're influenced by the era that they grew up in when Communists and Fascists where the boogie men of this country. Wolfenstein has Nazi fetish female soldiers, and during the seventies Naziploitation flicks were all the rage such as Ilsa She Wolf of the SS. GI Joe is an American icon, and its influenced many of young boy to have early aspirations of joining the armed forces. The creators of those video games grew up in that culture. So the entertainment they produce is a reflection of their influences. The very institutions that influenced them such as the military, aspects of patriotism are now imitating the very baby they gave birth to.
I'll give you a personal example. I can't divulge too much of where I grew up, but we'll just say its on the northern east coast. I've got relatives on the West Coast. I visited them one summer, and spent a few weeks. Thats the first time I was exposed to gangbanging. I had never heard of Crips and Bloods, and Surenos, none of that stuff. I didn't even know racist white dudes gangbanged the same way blacks and Latinos bang. The year that I went out there, was the same year I started high school. This is only two years after the movie "Colors" was in theaters with Sean Penn and Robert Duvall playing cops dealing with the LA gang problem. The year I started high school, we had Crips and Bloods, which are still in this city till this day. I heard at one point that it spread to our city by a couple real Crips from LA who were spreading their drug market. How true that is, I don't know. I personally believe it was the movie Colors, and the rap music that was popular at the time. Even if there was a couple legitimate Crips who organized it here, one cannot deny the influence popular entertainment had on us as youths. Now here's the real flipside to it!! Crips and Bloods, Surenos, and other West Coast based gangs existed before rap music and the movie Colors made it all entertaining. Gangbangers were killing each other while listening to Rick James and Barry White! So at that point you can't blame rap music for what was happening in Southern California during the late 70s and 80s. But again, it goes both ways with art, life, and what and who is doing the mockery.