Time Spent Playing Games Unlikely To Have Health Impacts, Says Study

Different forms of media get a lot of blame for many problems around the world. Whether they are movies or games, people put a lot of blame on media consumption. Out of all types of media, video games get the most hate and unnecessary criticism.

Video games constitute one of the biggest industries in the whole world. Kids make up a huge demographic of games, so the medium is always under scrutiny for something. From getting the blame for any kind of violence to being the main cause of mental health problems, games get a lot of criticism.

However, most of the types the problems video games cause are not based on fact and are just hysteria. Studies that take place all year round continue to disprove the harmful effects of video games. Recently, a new study has proved another false pretense about video games to be untrue.

According to a recent study from the University of Oxford, time spent on video games has no impact on the health of players. You will need to play for almost half a day for gaming to affect you in any way; otherwise, there is no harm. Hence, it has no link with your well-being or health in any remote way.

The researchers, Andrew Przybylski, alongside Kristoffer Magnusson, Niklas Johannes, and Matti Vuorre from the department of Oxford Internet Institute, conducted a study with results slightly different from this in 2020. Andrew Przybylski was a part of both of these video game studies, and it seems like this one is more accurate.

In this one, the researchers invited millions of players through e-mail, with 38,395 taking part. For the study, seven different video games from seven developers were used to judge the effect better. Eve Online, Forza Horizon 4, Outriders, Gran Turismo Sport, The Crew 2, Apex Legends, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons were the seven video games in use for the research. 

CCP Games, Microsoft, SQUARE ENIX, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, and Nintendo; all took part in the study. Using such a huge sample size for this study tells us the sheer scale and accuracy it has. Furthermore, the result of this massive research was in favor of video games.

The primary objective of the study was to find out the impact of video games on players’ well-being. Analyses of the data provided the team with no evidence that games have a negative effect on well-being. Hence, if you play games for a reasonable amount of time, you won’t see any effect.

“But contrary to what we might think about games being good or bad for us, we found [in this latest study] pretty conclusive evidence that how much you play doesn’t really have any bearing whatsoever on changes in well-being,” said Andrew Przybylski.

The secondary objective of the study was to find out if players’ well-being affects how much time they spend on video games. Once again, the researchers couldn’t find any evidence to say that well-being affects the time an individual gives to games.

People are actually happier when they are playing video games, according to Andrew Przybylski. “If players were playing because they wanted to, rather than because they felt compelled to, they had to, they tended to feel better.”

One last goal of the research was to find out how motivational experiences in gaming impact well-being. In simple words, are players happier when they play games on their own or through external pressure? You will not be very surprised to know that players were happier when playing video games on their own accord. Hence, your health or wellbeing is not affected one bit by playing games as there is no direct relation.