Internet gaming, embodied distress, and psychosocial well-being: A syndemic-syndaimonic continuum

Publication date: Available online 12 December 2019Source: Social Science & MedicineAuthor(s): Jeffrey G. Snodgrass, Michael G. Lacy, Steven W. ColeAbstractWe examine internet gaming-related suffering as a novel syndemic most prevalent among contemporary emerging adults. Synthetic analysis of our prior research on internet gaming and health affirms how social factors and mental and physical wellness mutually condition each other in this online play context. Employing biocultural anthropological mixed methods, we focus on statistical interactions between intensive gaming and social well-being in relation to genomic markers of immune function. We show that among gamers with low social well-being, intensive game play is associated with compromised immunity markers, but among those with robust social connection, that same play correlates with decreased activation of stress-related immunity activation. The apparently beneficial interaction of higher social well-being and intensive game play resonates with an emerging body of research showing how positive practices—in this case, engaged and pleasurable videogame play—can increase resilience to the negative linked psychological and genomic responses to precarity. Based on these findings, we argue, in relation to gaming behaviors, a syndemics analysis could usefully be expanded by attending to both sides of the synergistic interaction between two social conditions: not just exacerbation of dysfunction in relation to their combine...
Source: Social Science and Medicine - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research