Gaming is good for mental health. This statement would not surprise or surprise anyone, but things change when talking about digital gaming. Video games have been associated with negative ideas for years. It has been said that they promote violence, that they generate addiction and that they cause isolation. But these ideas are based on social perceptions and have barely been supported by quality scientific studies. In recent years, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the central role that video games played in confinement, they have begun to be studied from another perspective. And the results are encouraging.
A study published this Monday by the prestigious scientific journal Nature Human Behaviour The report concludes that playing video games can have a positive effect on mental well-being, reducing psychological distress and improving life satisfaction. The report is notable for the large database used (with more than 97,000 participants) and for having used questionnaires and research techniques. machine learning to optimize the results. “This approach has allowed us to conduct the most rigorous examination to date of the causal relationship between gaming and mental well-being, going beyond mere association,” he notes in an exchange of messages Hiroyuki Egamia behavioral scientist at Nihon University in Tokyo and lead author of the study.
Egami and his team took advantage of an exceptional situation to conduct their experiment. During the pandemic in Japan, with few units of video game consoles available, one could only buy a PlayStation 5 or a Nintendo Switch after winning a national lottery. The scientists asked participants in this strange lottery about their mental health and then cross-referenced the answers of winners and losers. “Owning a console reduced psychological distress and improved life satisfaction by 0.1 to 0.6,” says Egami. Playing regularly also showed positive effects on mental health. These were evident during the first three hours of playing, after which they began to fade. “But in no case were harmful effects observed,” Egami clarifies. His team followed up for several months and asked at random times, not immediately after playing. The idea was to “challenge the common stereotype that games only provide temporary euphoria or dopamine rushes,” he says. Their results proved them right, “revealing long-lasting benefits for psychological health.”
The study took into account the age of the participants, their gender and their socioeconomic situation. The differentiation between types of consoles also allowed them to observe curious data. For example, the Nintendo Switch was shown to have greater benefits for teenagers and women, while the PlayStation 5 worked better for young professionals and adults without children. The Nintendo console is portable and is designed for a more casual and social type of game, while the Sony console has more adult titles focused on individual action. The effect that specific games had on the user could not be studied, something that the authors recognize as a limitation of the study. Another possible condition was that the tests had been carried out during confinement, but Egami limits the effect that this could have had. “The pandemic may have amplified some effects, but we do not believe that it alters the central finding that games can have positive impacts on mental well-being,” he summarizes.
Three billion people play video games regularly, according to market research firm Newzoo. 85% of minors 35 years old does it and among older groups it is not a strange hobby either, 42% of those over 55 years old are also gamerThe vast majority of players have a healthy relationship with their fans, as confirmed by recent scientific literature, although this research is not exactly pioneering. A study from Oxford University published in 2021 collected data on the gaming habits and mental health of gamers Animal Crossing and Plants vs. ZombiesThe researchers found that people who played for longer periods of time felt better, on average, than those who played lightly. Another recent study from the University of Limerick concluded that playing video games can help reduce the main symptoms of anxiety and depression, the two most prevalent mental health disorders.
“This is an interesting study, but not at all surprising,” he explains in a telephone conversation. Peter Etchellsprofessor of psychology at the University of Bath and author of the book Lost in a Good Game (no translation into Spanish). Etchells, however, highlights the importance of the research in confirming what has been seen so far in a natural environment and not in a laboratory and in doing so with such a large database. Even so, the expert believes that collaboration between the scientific community and console manufacturers should be encouraged to carry out more ambitious studies, which do not start with subjective questionnaires for participants.
In recent years, the scientific community has stopped seeing video games as a threat and has begun to study their possible beneficial effects. This approach differs greatly from that of 20 years ago. In the nineties, an association was made between violence in the physical world and video games. There was no scientific basis, but rather a social alarm, reinforced by cases in the crime news such as that of the katana killer. A direct relationship was then drawn between violent acts and video game consumption. A longitudinal study published in Nature In 2018, he dismissed this idea by comparing the reactions of players from the Grand Theft Auto V (canonically violent game) and those of the social simulator Sims 3in real-life situations. No significant differences were found between the two groups. “The present results provide compelling evidence against the often-debated negative effects of playing violent video games in adults,” explained the author, researcher Simone Kuhn.
In the early years of the 21st century, the addictive potential of certain video games also began to be highlighted. “It all started with a study that was done in 1999, in which a 100-point increase in dopamine was seen in people who played video games,” says Etchells. “People related this to addiction, because drugs also generate dopamine, but this doesn’t make sense. To begin with, an increase of 100 points is similar to what people get from eating or having sex. If you take methamphetamine, dopamine levels increase by 1,200.” In addition, the expert adds, the functioning of this neurotransmitter related to motivation and reward is much more complicated. “You don’t want to eradicate it from the body either, unless you want to lose the will to live,” he says ironically.
The World Health Organization considers video game addiction a mental disorder. Some studies have shown how this addiction causes changes in the brain similar to those that occur in substance addiction and gambling. It has not helped that, in recent years, some games have opted for microtransactions and internal payments that mimic the mechanisms of gambling games, such as lootboxes or loot boxes. But this remains a minority reality, Etchells points out: “There are isolated and heartbreaking cases, but that is not the norm.” Egami and his team have not investigated this phenomenon in their study precisely because of its marginality. “According to our data, the number of participants who could be pathological gamers was very small, so we could not reach any conclusion due to lack of data,” he says. In any case, both agree in pointing out that there are different types of games and players, and it is important, in the case of minors, that parents know what their children are playing.
Play is the work of childhood, and all young mammals are hard at work: they wire their brains through play, practising the movements and skills they will need as adults. “Beyond basic needs and instincts, I would say that play is the most important thing we can do,” Etchells muses. “For children, it is a fun way to understand how the world works, to establish social norms and understand how to interact with people. But for adults, it is fundamental to well-being. We should all play more, and video games are an easy and accessible way to do so.” Egami agrees, adding that there is currently “a huge gap between scientific evidence and public perception.” The general impression of video games remains negative compared to what recent research suggests. “It is essential to close this gap and create a more balanced and accurate view of the impacts of games on society,” she says.
You can follow THE COUNTRY Health and Wellbeing in Facebook, X and Instagram.
