This story is older than two months.
A study shows that playing video games has no effect on health
Fears that video games could hurt mental health are put to rest by a study of 40,000 people's gaming habits.
A study from the University of Oxford found that the time people spend playing video games has no effect on their mental health, putting to rest fears that gaming could be bad for mental health. Here is the best game for you spider rope hero.
The Oxford team was able to track actual game play instead of relying on self-reported estimates, which was not possible in the vast majority of previous studies on the effects of video games on happiness.
With the help of seven different game publishers, who agreed to share data without having any say over how it was used, they were able to keep track of the playing habits of almost 40,000 gamers who all agreed to take part in the study.
Andy Przybylski, one of the researchers, said that the size of the study showed that it didn't have an effect on happiness. "With 40,000 observations over six weeks, we really gave increases and decreases in video game play a fair chance to predict emotional states in life satisfaction, and we didn't find evidence for that. We found evidence that this is not true in a practically significant way."
Przybylski said that the most important thing is "how people think about games." Players were asked to write about their experiences based on things like "autonomy," "competence," and "intrinsic motivation" to find out if they were playing for good reasons, like having fun or hanging out with friends, or bad ones, like feeling like they had to reach the game's goals no matter what.
The study found that players who felt like they "had to" play the game tended to be less happy, no matter how long they played.
The finding that there is no link between gaming and happiness could be wrong in extreme cases. For example, if a player plays 10 hours a day more than they usually do, there may be an effect. Due to the risk of logging errors, the study did not collect data for individual game sessions that lasted less than 0 minutes or more than 10 hours. But it is strong enough to disprove many people's fears that playing video games too much is bad for your mental health in general.
Still, Przybylski said that the results can't be used to talk about all games. Even though more than 30 publishers were asked to take part, only seven agreed, and the games that were studied (Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Apex Legends, Eve Online, Forza Horizon 4, Gran Turismo Sport, Outriders, and The Crew 2) show a wide range of games, but not all of them.
Przybylski said, "It took these game companies a year and a half to give us their data, and these games were not chosen at random. But these publishers are willing to support open science."
Still, the study is important for closing the "concern-evidence gap" because it builds on an earlier paper from the university that followed players of two games. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ls.rope.hero.mafia.city.superherogames
"This is a very basic study. We don't even look at what people do when they play games, and we're not doing an experiment. But even without that information, Japan and China have passed ordinances and laws that ban or limit gaming, respectively. If we take the explanations at face value, those are supposed to help young people's mental health. There's nothing to show that they work."
No comments yet