The many skeptical comments on this thread are well founded, however the idea that video games positively correlate with well-being seems to resonate with my own experience.
When I have downtime nowadays, I often tune out by listening to podcasts while playing video games on my phone. I jokingly refer to this with my wife as “dial tone mode”.
This doesn’t take the place of reading; I read a lot of articles and books, both fiction and non-fiction. I reckon I read much more since I acquired a smart phone and basically carry a library in my pocket FWIW. But I don’t think reading serves the same function as dial tone mode.
I suffer from depression and anxiety. When I’m not reading, I don’t usually sit around and have wonderful ideas. Instead, I listen to the often nasty voices in my head telling me there’s something terribly wrong with me and my life. This is especially true if I’m stressed out.
Dial tone mode feels therapeutic to me, and iPhone video games are a part of that. I’m quite aware I could be wrong, even about my interpretation of my own experience. But so it seems to me.
I play computer games in moderation, and find them therapeutic too. I have had some really intense anxiety episodes and I attribute much of my present stability to having activities available that easily engage my mind. I think it's suuuuper important to feel your feelings and not be in a race with yourself to obliterate them, so it's important to focus on aligning your activities with your values, and not escapism. Flow, achievement and health and values of mine, so I play games with this in mind (hence intense and short episodes mostly). If you play to "escape" too much, it might be counter-productive, as this can result in a nasty feedback-loop. I guess what I practice is still escapism, sometimes, especially from boredom and work-stress, but I frame it more as an exercise in putting my attention somewhere, and being in the moment, rather than a fight to "feel good".
Also, I suspect the benefits of gaming align with higher-order human needs (e.g. From Maslow's hierarchy; problem-solving, confidence, achievement etc).
I suffered and still occasionally suffer from a lot of anxiety. It got pretty bad at one point and caused repeated panic attacks. Anyway, I'd caution you against creating an avoidance mechanism to deal with it. I noticed I would automatically grab my smart phone a lot to read something and I'm not sure it was really helpful. It was almost an annoying compulsive addiction. Not much different than reaching for a drink or cigarette really.
Obviously, sitting there doing nothing for long periods of time probably isn't great but I think it's good to just set aside moments where you stop trying to distract yourself. This can be done through meditation or some other method of your choosing (outdoor activity is good). It's good to let your thoughts come in and sort of train yourself to stop fearing them or having such knee-jerk reactions.
It seems like I've developed a healthier response to them by doing this. I can laugh at a lot of my stupid negative thoughts more easily now.
Or you play computer games when you feel well. A common symptom of ADHD or depression is anhedonia which leads one to have a hard time with video games.
That's fine as long as you have balance in your life. Probably healthy as long as most of your time is spent doing something meaningful to you.
But if most of your discretionary time is spent doing unimportant things, that can contribute to depression and anxiety.
"Dial tone mode" sounds a lot like the checking out alcoholics, drug users and other people suffering from compulsive disorders waste their lives doing.
I'm no expert, but there's probably a balance. There are certainly some benefits to zoning out for a bit, but there's also an opportunity cost. Spending N hours a week in dial tone mode is likely a good idea, but spending A LOT of time idling is probably not ideal (for whatever your definition of an ideal life is).
fellow depression+anxiety+spectrum compatriot; I echo your experience, and do not think you're wrong that (video) games can and are a valuable coping tool against the nasty voices that like to try to run our minds.
* only looking at animal crossing and a plants vs. zombies game. I can only speak to animal crossing but I wouldn't be surprised if that game sparks a lot more joy and well being than most.
* They do some... weird visualization choices with bars going both up and down but both implying a positive impact. I've never seen this. Super weird. You can't even compare the two options.
* R^2 of play time and well begin is 0.01. Technically significant.
Certainly sounds like garbage. I'd sort of expect random noise to produce an R^2 of around that value. But maybe for studies of human value that's normal? It's a peer reviewed study, so I'd hope it meets some basic standard for significance, but who knows? Is anyone familiar enough with psychology research to say how good or bad this is?
What that actually means is that if the observations are representative of the underlying reality, then 1% of happiness is explained by playing video games.
We use p-values to determine whether a relationship is likely to actually exist based on observations. R^2 is a measure of the "strength" of the relationship, i.e. how much of the dependent variable is explained by the independent variable -- it is silent on the matter of whether the relationship is likely to actually exist.
I'm curious as to whether these are actually correlated. I anecdotally doubt that video game players exercise at a higher rate than non players.
Alternatively, I would guess that just generally having free time to spend in any way is a healthy thing. We already know that stress is correlated with worse outcomes. The study does mention that income could be a third causal variable, I think stress is probably a similarly correlated factor.
Turns out that a healthy body is correlated with reflexes. You need a level of workout activity if you want to be a professional-level video game player.
The "fat and lazy" trope kinda-sorta works for maybe casual games. But a fit body means a fit mind, and a fit mind plays games at a higher level.
People who play professionally are a very different population of people than what this study was looking at.
This study was looking at Plants vs Zombies: Battle for Neighborville and Animal Crossing: New Horizons players from the general population.
Also note that I didn't claim that gamers were "fat and lazy" as you suggested. I doubt that they exercise at a rate higher than the general population. I would guess they probably exercise at a rate similar to the general population, particularly because so many people play games.
Neither of those games seem correlated with the "Fat and Lazy gamer" trope. "Fat and Lazy" is usually associated with games with high-levels of grind, like World of Warcraft or maybe Genshin Impact as a more recent example.
Certain games suck you in and require abnormal amounts of time to feel good about anything. Other games, like Animal Crossing or Plants vs Zombies, are more casual, and have a better life / play balance.
> I didn't claim that gamers were "fat and lazy" as you suggested. I doubt that they exercise at a rate higher than the general population
The general population is on average "fat and lazy" and exercise at a rate that is near enough to 0 to make no difference. Age and wealth as factors will outweigh any other input when it comes to these benchmarks.
At the height of WoW, most of my guild was raiding from 10PM to 3AM every single day, after solo play starting at 5 or 6 PM. And these were parents in their 30's/40's that would put the kids to sleep and game. And then go to work after 5 hours of sleep. The ones I knew in person were fat to obese and did not at all exercise because that would take away from grinding Molten Core or Nef.
There is a certain difficult to quantify benefit to video games vs sleep and exercise though. I have done 4-6 week stints of extreme discipline with a strict keto diet, 6X a week gym and no video games. I usually end up a little depressed after a few weeks. I think it is because we need to feel some enthusiasm or emotion in our day to day life, and if you combine a 40hr work week with disciplined free time you are just void of that. Video games and Movies allow you to feel a high level of engagement and escape in a 2 hour window. There aren't too many other activities that generate that feeling and can be slotted into the constrained time windows that working full time allow.
You get 1-2 hours a night from 8-10pm what do you do? Exercise wakes me up so I don’t want to do that before I sleep and it’s too early to sleep. So I can watch tv, play video games, or work on my personal projects. The rest of the day is work, kids, cooking, and cleaning.
As the partner of someone who is addicted to a computer game this is 100% not true. The game takes over any non-working hours and eats in to sleep time.
also from personal experience, I find video games a lot more enjoyable when i have good mental health. When I’m depressed or anxious or numb video games don’t feel rewarding at all, they actually feel like work.
Came here to comment this. Further, people with time and the resources (PCs, consoles) are probably more limely to be financially stable. This means (in countries w/o universal healthcare) they can afford Dr. visits, oral, optical, etc making them better off in general.
I don’t know. Back when I was younger and friends were younger and we had few responsibilities, gaming cut into regular sleep hours and know that we tended to do fewer outdoor activities.
Maybe the gaming landscape has changed a lot, but it would surprise me.
Ya, but if all you do is sleep, exercise, and work, you're kind of dull. If you have time to do anything but work and look after kids, you should spend some on exercise, and some on something that brings your life flavour
I dunno ... I have seen multiple people skip sleep and exercise so that they can play. And then everybody else had to deal with sleep deprived cranky them.
> In this study, we investigate the relations between video games and positive mental health, namely affective well-
being of players (from here on called well-being)....
> We designed a survey measuring players’ well-being, self-reported play, and motivations for play and discussed the survey structure with Electronic Arts.
> We assessed well-being with the validated Scale of Positive and Negative Experiences [59], which measures the affective dimension of well-being [38]. We asked respondents to think about how they had been feeling in the past two weeks and report how often they experienced each of six positive and six negative feelings.
If you gave heroin addicts and unrestricted supply of heroin and performed a similar study, would you find that heroin use is "positively correlated with will being"?
I have a young toddler. When I was reading about letting them watch TV, an article I read made a good point: babies and toddlers enjoy watching TV, but it doesn't do them any good (they're too young to make sense of the pictures) and tends to deprive them of experiences (e.g. language exposure) actually that does do them good. My intuition is video games are similar for adults.
My mind immediately went to surveying the participants in a Skinner box on their perceived well being. It would be incredible if people DIDN'T self-report feeling great after pulling the dopamine levers
No idea why you're being downvoted. The vast majority of today's games are literally designed from the ground up to be habit forming. They use timed random rewards in order to impose schedules on players. EA is of course a major offender, it's one of the reasons why they are universally hated.
The article essentially concludes that being rewarded feels good in the short term. What I'd like to see is long-term happiness and socioeconomic impact.
So they collaborated with EA, a company so infamous for anti-consumer practices like real-money gambling for minors that they are basically synonymous with "evil" within the gaming subculture and found out...that EA games make you happy!
If you are actually interested in this topic, there are a lot of reviews including way longer periods, variables and genres. Of course, you still have to apply the same filter to sift through moral panic and game ads, but this study is even if not biased still unnecessarily limited in scope. Not a good base for a discussion IMO...
And it may just be that happiness and video game playing are both correlated with something else, like having a lot of leisure time and/or a lot of discretionary spending money.
It's notoriously difficult to study because you can't tell some 6-year old that they should become a gamer as that is what your random number generator wants them to do.
But, it's also difficult to study because the effect size, whatever it direction may be, is rather small. (nobody ever agreed to a double-blind experiment proving that bullets kill, just as a point of comparison).
From what I read back when it interested me, it seems suggestive of a mild negative effect. But it's hard to say because of the absolutely overwhelming effect of in the other direction: there is absolutely no doubt that eight hours or more of weekly gaming is evidence of depression for age groups 16 and up. (valid for PC/console only. Gaming on mobile phones is often more indicative of using public transport than anything else).
"There is absolutely no doubt that eight hours or more of weekly gaming is evidence of depression for age groups 16 and up."
But is it a form of self medication or pathology?
Being over 16 and gaming too much is an obvious probable pathology, but I would not see pathology as the only interpretation.
I had a pretty dark time in my life during which Kerbal Space Program may well have saved my life (by taking my mind completely off the bad stuff and giving a nice boost of the positive brain transmitters).
There are definitely people who escape into video games to avoid dealing with problems in the real world.
Perhaps this is a good thing in the short term (your experience definitely seems to suggest this!), but anecdotally many of the long-term, heavy games-players I know (mid-20s) seem to be taking on less responsibility, investing less into themselves, their future and the people around them, and failing to live up to their potential in a noticeable way.
> there is absolutely no doubt that eight hours or more of weekly gaming is evidence of depression for age groups 16 and up
I doubt that. Many critically acclaimed single player games take from 40 up to 120 hours to complete, so 8 hours a week puts you on track to play through one game in a month.
From an outsiders perspective that seems really reasonable? If I put 8 hours of reading per week in, then I would probably finish 1-2 books per month. How many games should one be finishing in a month?
It's individual and also depends on the game (some are much shorter like 8 hours, some can absorb 100s of hours, some games don't have a clear "end"), but one per 1-2 months with a break in between gives you high quality entertainment and it's an enriching experience.
I'd say that's a typical pace for an adult gamer with a job.
Books are a good analogy for the single player games with a definite ending. The satisfaction I get from completing them is similar (but not exactly the same).
I tried to find a link on pubmed about depression and gaming.
"Depressive symptoms and suicidal are associated to screen time induced poor sleep, digital device night use, and mobile phone dependency." (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29499467/)
This other study (http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/27290/7/27290_Kuss.pdf) seems to show some association between depression and addictive use of video games (The criteria for addiction is not about length but rather about how the behavior is effecting the person life). It should be noted however that social media has a slightly higher association with depression.
I doubt there is evidence that eight hours or more of weekly gaming would be any kind of evidence of depression for age groups 16 and up. If a person, of any age group, uses games or social media to the point where it prevents them from function in society and they don't sleep, then that is likely associated with risk of depression. Not 100%, but maybe with a pearson correlation coefficient of r=0.25.
Now I should really stop writing on HN and get some sleep before people called me depressed.
> there is absolutely no doubt that eight hours or more of weekly gaming is evidence of depression for age groups 16 and up
Based on what? Is there good evidence for this, or is this anecdotal? I think that's a far more complex statement that it appears on the surface, and I don't think I agree with the strong "no doubt" part of it. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise though.
What evidence? It would be impossible to quantify this, but I'd love to see the data that makes this assertion. I'm arguing that anything less than 8 hours a week means you're not playing enough or you don't enjoy gaming as much as others might.
Nothing too concise, I am afraid. I think your best chance is to focus on a specific question that interests you. I will give you an answer in relation to some specific variables I did a deep dive on:
Video games and short term aggression: Enough findings for me to prefer giving my (not currently existing) children something to do that are not video games if possible, lest they learn unnecessarily aggressive behavior just by copying. However, probably not a mortal danger.
Video games and (adult/teen) addiction: Seems incredibly hard to track on a long-term base, as other people in this thread mention. Nothing is easier to color a bit to your liking than a meta analysis with small effect sizes, if you should be so inclined. On the other hand, good arguments can be made that excessive gaming behavior is very, very similar to excessive alcohol consumption, gambling or smoking - in regards to brain chemistry, slow drifting decline of societal function or even excuses made to the self. Thus, personally I treat gaming with the same seriousness as other potentially addictive things.
Hope that helps a bit, and good luck on your research journey. Maybe you even find some wider spanning reviews that are new, we live in a good era of terminating twenty-year studies :)
If one is depressed they are likely not keen on gaming either. Conversely, when in good mood activities such as gaming or whatever hobbies people have are on the rise so this one is pretty obvious how it generally relates to well being. In my opinion too much gaming can't be good for you but some moderate amount could be a decent stimulant. For good wellbeing we need to satisfy a few more needs and a surplus of one does not compensate for the others.
> If one is depressed they are likely not keen on gaming either
Do you have a source for that? In my anecdotal opinion, video games offer a refuge from the real life that can be helpful in depressions. It's addictive and causes addiction style issues, but that is another story.
It is my personal opinion, sorry, I should have mentioned that. When depressed I don't feel like doing anything at all, I lack stamina and feel weak. The refuge/escapism part is when I'm less depressed but still am ruminating on how pointless everything is and that's when escapism does its trick. While it helps at the moment I don't think escaping reality does us any good in the long run though.
My guess would be that it would vary a lot by game and by person. Sometimes even getting started on video games that I know I would enjoy seems like "too much work".
For me it becomes more difficult to get started on anything. Once I get some momentum it isn't as bad but eventually there will be a moment of 'this is doing nothing' and crash out.
That isn't so bad for solo play but most of my playtime is co-op games like Deep Rock or Vermintide and I am lucky to have an IRL friend group to play them with.
I disagree, games are a form of escapism. Nothing is better for the passage of time than immersive gameplay, but passage of time is not always beneficial.
If someone was happy, they’re less likely to escape that world, unless they’re playing with the people they’re social with in reality not a gamer they play with, usually with local LAN or multiplayer it’s different than single player or playing with strangers.
I can tell you from my own experience that they very first sign of my (diagnosed) major depression is losing interest in games. Pleasure completely evaporates, and something that takes some effort to enjoy like games or reading is the first to go. I would rather lay in bed awake staring at the ceiling with my chest heavy and in a lot of pain than play a game.
I don't relate at all to anything you say about escapism. Depression doesn't mean hating the world and your circumstances. Most of my depressions came when I knew that objectively my life is great and I'm doing well. It's an internal total loss of joy that destroys the positive feedback loops that keep all of us motivated.
I don't think of games are more escapist than any other solo activity, like education or reading non-fiction or programming. It's just another type of joyful effortful focus. I don't forget myself and who I am and live in the game. I'm still me, playing the game.
playing video games is still existing in the world. Just because youre focused on something doesnt mean you cease to be human. If that were true, sport would be the same, programming the same, etc.
Sport is not tricking your sound and vision it is elsewhere. In programmer terms you know that perfect flow state, where you’re attuned to everything and you’re programming really efficiently then some error or bug comes up and kills your streak of productivity? That’s what games induce by default.
so what? theres something wrong with "flow state" now? it seems to me youre just against videogames. Your point about sound and vision doesnt even mean much, all entertainment is then, by your definition, escapism: movies, books, programming, video/photo editing, playing/listening to music, the list goes on. Even sports are an imaginary set of rules set aside which are unnecessary for actual survival. Maybe youre right all those things are escapism but im much happier with any/all of those things then i am without.
I said that speeding up the passage of time is not always bad. Play is important and sports provides fitness benefits and fun. I don't think there is anything wrong with coping with unhappiness, but lets be honest about what they are.
Collaboration with EA? Let’s see how much well being they have after playing this war of mine.
Correlation with self reported well being could be applied to opiate use. Let’s try
> People have never used more prescription opiate medication and no stakeholders are worried that this activity might be bad. So far, research has not had adequate data to test whether these worries are justified and if policymakers should act to more heavily regulate opiates. We attempt to provide much-needed evidence with adequate data. Whereas previous research had to rely on self-reported opiate use, we collaborated with two drug companies, Purdue Pharma and Johnson and Johnson, to obtain user’s actual drug usage behavior. We surveyed users of Oxycodone and Dilaudid for their well-being, motivations, and need satisfaction during drugs and merged their responses with prescription data. Contrary to many fears that excessive drug prescribing will lead to addiction and poor mental health, we found a positive relation between drug use and affective well-being. Need satisfaction and motivations during use did not interact with high time but were instead independently related to well-being. Our results advance the field in two important ways. First, we show that collaborations with industry partners can be done to high academic standards in an ethical and transparent fashion. Second, we deliver much-needed evidence to policymakers on the link between drugs and mental health.
(Self reported surveys are not ever scientific I don’t know how they can say high standards and post this after)
> Another limiting factor on the confidence in our results is the low response rate observed in both of our surveys. It is possible that various selection effects might have led to unrepresentative estimates of well-being, drug usage, or their relationship. Increasing response rates, while at the same time ensuring samples’ representativeness, remains a challenge for future studies in this field.
I find video games definitely get the brain working, much in the same way as playing chess or other board games, thinking about problems, etc... Definitely more 'active' than consuming (most) media.
I'd even theorize that video games have become so popular because our brains need some sort of conflict and stimulation; now that we're sedentary and no longer concerned with daily survival and conflict with the natural world/other tribes.
I think paper titles should be as thoroughly reviewed as their content. This goes for almost all psychology papers. Researchers should not generalize their results haphazardly.
In this particular case, they have only looked at two particular video games. And yet they claim that video game play is correlated with well-being.
I know that the title is technically correct but if you always have to resort to such cheap tactics to make your research seem relevant then the entire field should be put into question.
There is no way you'd find a paper in CS titled "An optimal solution to the Traveling Salesman Problem" when the paper has only solved a constrained, limited version of the problem.
I play videogames because I love them (primary reason). I do have to specify I play mostly indie games, single player only (or couch/lan coop).
That being said, they are great for slowly reducing my brain load. If I do something too "simple", my brain goes back to work: way more engaging and challenging.
Videogames are (based on choice) somewhat of an hybrid in intensity, giving me the possibility to slowly reduce the brain load, so that a simple activity afterwards is possible, without thinking about work.
I've noticed something improving after using FPSs - my hand-eye is better. Noticeably better. IRL if something starts to accidentally drop off a shelf, 10 out of 10 times, I will catch it. ok maybe 19 out of 20, but there is this 'peripheral vision enhancement' coupled with 'gotta get this noob before s/he gets me!' that -- for me at least -- results in real-world gain. Now, is it worth 45 mins/day to do this? I dunno, different discussion I suppose.
There are plenty of anecdotes of games having real world skill benefits that I think people overlook. One of my favorites is a friend who ended up majoring in business because of the in-game trade economy of Team Fortress 2 of all things, and also ended up marrying a woman he met through the game. TF2 basically shaped his entire adult life, and lately with the pandemic we've been going back to the game together online which has been wonderfully social.
A personal anecdote for me would be Smash Bros Melee which completely reshaped my teenage life by giving me a huge friend group that played the game, taking me out to local tournaments where I met plenty of new people and broke out of my asocial shell, giving me an appreciation for traveling when I went long distance to major tournaments, and helping me understand how rewarding it feels to tangibly improve at a skill that you've been working hard on which has helped me immensely when it came time to learn new skills in college.
Discussions of games being "good" or "bad" miss so many of these. Video games are another facet of life that you can do plenty with. Sure, there are awful, predatory games that exist to suck money and time out of the lonely, but there are games that exist to just have fun, games that teach actual valuable life lessons, and plenty of chances to use games to further your own life. Football is a good comparison because it is similarly meaningless on paper and easy to look down on (and I'll admit I used to do this myself), but it has absolutely changed the lives of uncountable people for the better in all sorts of ways. It really is more about how you use the tools that are given to you than the tools themselves.
You are getting downvoted, but this dovetails nicely with my experience. I used to have not-so-good reflexes. Then I started to play FPS games a little more seriously without the usual "bullet time modes", and my reflexes improved markedly - including the ability to catch falling items most of the time, which I didn't have before.
Well, correlation doesn't imply causation, no? As it doesn't mean that playing video increase your well-being. Because being able to play video game imply being not too destitute, having enough free time to play and being mentally healthy enough to play (just today I was reading a post on a video game forum, with a poster complaining he was too depressed to do anything, including play video games).
Everytime an article like this comes up, there's always someone who says "correlation doesn't imply causation". Which anyone who has done statistics 101 knows this and the article says in its title, that there is a positive correlation (not causation). It also acknowledges in its limitations that it cannot claim that play time has a causal affect on well-being.
They also say in the abstract that they found only a small positive relation between gameplay and well-being.
Definitely anecdotal but I think a lot faster because of the mental workout that comes from fast-paced fighter games and shooters. Additionally, some fighter pilots noted over the years that new generations of pilots had faster reflexes than their older peers specifically because the younger generations had gotten into the habit of playing lots of video games growing up.
Can you assert no conflict of interest if you play, or associate with people who play?
Also, socially functioning people may play games because a majority plays games, and social function would be the cause.
Is there a way to isolate game playing? Like a version of Tarzan where he's raised by a game?
What about game playing vs reading novels?
In particular, correlation goes both ways. Not only is "video game play positively correlated with well being", but so is "well being positively correlated with video game play".
If we go back to the 1800s and look at masters at Chess, Shogi or Go / Baduk, we'll see that they're all well-off individuals.
Everything is fine in moderation. Everyone needs time to decompress from a long day in some way or another. If video games are your way to do that, that’s great
I read only title but I'm interested in video games.
If you are interested in this subject I recommend watching this video from Game Developer's Conference: "How the Industry Can Change the "Games Are Bad" Narrative" (27 minutes) [1]. It is commentary about current situation - how public opinion sees games and how change opinion to be it more based on actual data and facts.
