It doesn't need to inspire sympathy, it just needs to be a much more likely cause/effect explanation than video games.
Why was there an increase in carjacking in Chicago?
My guess is Covid, at least it seems a pretty good candidate to start digging deeper if there's a correlation. Less people in the streets, more parked cars, lots of people without a job having nothing to do and no good source of income.
One way to refute this would be to profile people cought carjacking. Are they rich? Do they still have a job? Are they kept busy with activities? If so, that could disprove my theory, otherwise it could reinforce it.
We could also look at if they actively and frequently play violent video games, though I'd be more likely to believe in a coincidence or a reverse relationship here, if it was the case, based on rational.
Edit: Also, you said "I was poor" past tense. So I'm not sure you'd count as a valid sample, it might be adults that carjack who knows. I also didn't say poor specifically, I said inequality and stress. Poverty can contribute to those, but there are other factors to inequality and stress, like lack of opportunity, neighborhood, access to good schools, troubled household, etc.