Playing video games all summer won’t make you feel worse
Video games aren’t hurting people’s mental health, and they’re not helping it. In fact, they don’t do much to move the needle at all, according to a new study of tens of thousands of gamers.
For years, policymakers and public health bodies have expressed concern about the potential for video games to be addictive or harm mental health. This study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, offers one of the more comprehensive looks at the relationship between video games and well-being. It builds on previous research from the same team that also didn’t find bad effects on mental health.
The research team worked with video game publishers to recruit nearly 39,000 peoplewho played one of seven games: Animal Crossing: New Horizons,Apex Legends,Eve Online, Forza Horizon 4,Gran Turismo Sport, andThe Crew 2. The game publishers provided game play data for participants over six weeks, and the researchers surveyed participants three times.
Because the team was able to examine player’s gaming data, they didn’t have to rely on player’s self-reporting the amount of time they spent playing games — so the team was able to get a more accurate read on gaming time. The study measured well-being using two tools: the scale of positive and negative experiences, which asks people to rank how often they experienced feelings like “happy” and “afraid,” and the Cantril self-anchoring scale, which asks people to say where they are on a ladder with the top representing their best possible life.
The study also asked people to take the Player Experience of Need Satisfaction survey, which tracks people’s experience with specific games — tracking things like their perception of autonomy and their motivations to play the game.
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