A recent study found that frequent video game playing does not significantly affect players' well-being, addressing concerns about potential mental health risks from gaming.
The study, published in the journal Technology, Mind and Behavior, found that time spent playing video games had no substantial positive or negative impact on adult gamers' mental health.
What is Gaming Disorder?
The health effects of gaming have been a hot topic of discussion in research, the media and policy debates, and these concerns were intensified by the World Health Organization's inclusion of “gaming disorder” in its International Classification of Diseases in 2018.
It is classified as a pattern of behavior characterized by “impaired control over gaming, prioritization of gaming over other activities, priority given to gaming over other interests or daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.”
What the study found
To measure the amount of time people spend playing different games, the researchers developed a way to record the amount of time people spend playing on the Xbox platform. Over a 12-week period, they studied the relationship between play time and happiness in 414 adult gamers in the US and UK who primarily play on Xbox.
The study, authored by Nick Barrow, a postdoctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, assessed three aspects of well-being, including positive emotions (participants' current level of happiness), depressive symptoms (experiences of sadness or despair in the past week) and overall mental health (their mental state over the past two weeks). Playtime was also recorded and measured over three time periods: the past 24 hours, the past week and the two weeks prior to that.
Participants typically played video games for approximately 2.1 hours per day, although the amount of time spent gaming varied widely across participants, with some gamers only playing about an hour per day and others playing much longer.
This study of 2036 completed surveys found minimal associations between play time and mental health despite employing a range of model specifications, suggesting that duration of gameplay is not a primary factor influencing mental health. Rather, this study supports shifting research focus to the context and quality of gameplay.
Study limitations
However, this study has some limitations that need to be addressed. A major limitation is that there may be time-varying confounding factors, variables that may affect both gaming habits and well-being over time. For example, fluctuations in disposable income may affect both the amount of gaming and an individual's mental health. Although the study collected open-ended feedback about life events that may affect both gaming and well-being, this data was not analyzed extensively.
Another limitation is that the study focuses on a specific demographic: adult Xbox players in the U.S. and the U.K. This particularity may limit the applicability of the results to younger gamers, people in other regions, or those who use different gaming platforms.
Featured Image: Canva
