There are plenty of parents out there who are concerned that their children are spending too much time playing video games. There are also some voices, more or less official, claiming that too much gaming is not healthy for a person’s brain, especially during childhood. But is that really true?
What’s for sure is that gaming can become incredibly fun, addicting, and even educative. It can also stimulate a person’s ambition and imagination. You can learn a lot of important historical events about WWII, for instance, if you play military shooters. You can learn a lot about how the world lived decades ago if you play the Mafia series.
Therefore, the ultimate question arises: is gaming actually bad for your mental health?
Study on 40,000 gamers says “no”
According to TechXplore, a new study of Oxford’s Internet Institute involving the assessment of 40,000 gamers reveals that the mental health of players doesn’t seem to suffer after they engage in their virtual worlds, regardless of what kinds of games there were.
But even so, there is a catch, and we all should take it into account. In a nutshell, it might be a problem if you’re addicted to your gaming.
Professor Andrew K. Przybylski explains, as TechXplore quotes:
We found it really does not matter how much gamers played [in terms of their sense of well-being]. It wasn’t the quantity of gaming, but the quality that counted…if they felt they had to play, they felt worse. If they played because they loved it, then the data did not suggest it affected their mental health. It seemed to give them a strong positive feeling.
In the end, we should all keep in mind that a lot more information is needed for the study’s authors to bring a sure conclusion.
Back in 2020, there were known to exist about 2.69 billion gamers across the world.
The new study was published in Royal Society Open Science.
