Image via Florian Olivo
There you have it folks, the verdict is in: Video games don’t play a substantial role in affecting your well-being. Unless, of course, you can’t stop playing and become addicted.
Although this may not be news to people who regularly play video games, others have always been a bit skeptical on the idea that gaming doesn’t harm mental health. They don’t really help mental health either. All-in-all, gaming just doesn’t affect your well-being.
A study published in the Royal Society Open Science journal has given some insight on the subject and has built upon previous research from the same team that had previously affirmed that video games do not cause negative mental health effects.
The research followed 39,000 people who played one of seven games:
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons
- Apex Legends
- Eve Online
- Forza Horizon 4
- Gran Turismo Sport
- The Crew 2
The researchers went on to survey participants three times and the game publishers provided game play data for the participants over a six-week period.
The study measured well-being on a scale of positive and negative experiences, asking participants to rank how often they experienced feelings such as “happy” and “afraid.” The study also used the Cantril self-anchoring scale, which asks people to place themselves on a theoretical ladder, with the top representing the best possible life.
On top of these things, the study asked participants to take the Player Experience of Need Satisfaction Survey, which tracked things like player perception of autonomy and their motivations to play the game.
The study concluded that spending more or less time playing video games did not have an impact on how people felt, either positively or negatively. The researchers found that any well-being changes were too small to have any real-world impact on people’s feelings. In order for any substantial changes to be made, people would have to play over 10 hours a day, a figure that is not typical at all.
The study did find that people’s motivations to play games and their experiences playing them did have a larger impact on well-being, but only by a slight amount. People who played games because they wanted to had a better sense of well-being than those who felt forced. However, those relationships were not substantial either.
Study author Andre Przybylski, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute said in a statement that “we know we need much more player data from many more platforms to develop the kind of deeper understanding required to inform policy and shape advice to parents and medical professionals.”
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Zainah Yousef
Zainah Yousef is the author of The Fallen Age Saga and specializes in gaming, social media advice, and reviews. She's been writing all her life and she probably won't stop anytime soon.
