Massive Study Finds No Link Between Time Spent Playing Video Games And Wellbeing

By Emma L. Barratt Video games are perhaps one of the most politicised forms of entertainment media out there. In the decades since they were first created, governments, politicians, health bodies and beyond have voiced concerns that the amount of time some players spend in these virtual worlds could be detrimental to their mental health. Despite all this concern, there’s been a lack of high-quality research into the effect of video games on player wellbeing. To remedy this situation, Matti Vuorre and colleagues at the University of Oxford, in collaboration with several large game publishers such as Nintendo and Square Enix, conducted an ambitious longitudinal study. These fears, they conclude in their recent preprint on PsyArXiv, are unfounded. In order to investigate whether longer play times had an impact on player wellbeing, the team recruited a massive 38,935 players of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Apex Legends, Eve Online, Forza, Gran Turismo, Outriders, and The Crew 2. Recruitment emails for this study targeted specifically English-speaking players from several countries.  Over the course of six weeks, players were asked to answer three “waves” of a survey, sent two weeks apart, containing measures of wellbeing and motivation. The first measure of wellbeing, a 13-point scale of positive and negative experiences (SPANE), asked participants how they had been feeling in the previous two weeks, and to rate how often they had experience...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Media Mental health Source Type: blogs