LONDON: A new study has stated that playing video games can be good for your mental health.
A study from Oxford University has found that people who played more games tended to report greater ‘wellbeing’, casting further doubt on reports that video gaming can harm mental health.
The study was one of the first to be done using actual play-time data. Previous studies had tended to focus on self-reported time playing, which is, the study found, only weakly correlated with reality. “This is about bringing games into the fold of psychology research that’s not a dumpster fire,” said Andrew Przybylski, the lead researcher on the project.
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Przybylski said at the start of the project he was surprised by how little data gaming companies actually had about their players but also by how little hard data had been used by previous studies into the potential harms or benefits of gaming. The researchers hope the study will introduce a higher standard of evidence to discussions about the concept of video game addiction, or digital harms in general.
“You have really respected, important bodies, like the World Health Organization and the NHS, allocating attention and resources to something that there’s literally no good data on, Przybylski said.
Przybylski added that it’s shocking to me, the reputational risk that everyone’s taking, given the stakes. “For them to turn around and be like, ‘hey, this thing that 95% of teenagers do? Yeah, that’s addictive, no, we don’t have any data,’ that makes no sense,” he said.
