Los video game They are a form of entertainment consumed by around 3,000 million people in the world. In addition to being a perfect mode of disconnection, help socialization and cooperation. Today, we can enjoy them at any time and place, which has raised fears that it will affect the mental health of those who enjoy it, even forcing political bodies to make decisions to reduce consumption.
But the reality is that video games bring great benefits, including speeding up response time, fostering teamwork or stimulating creativity, focus and visual memory. Already in 2020, Professor Andrew Przybylski led a study to analyze that video games are positively correlated with well-beingconcluding that it affects positively to mental health of people, and the regulation of their use might retain those benefits to the players. Now, a recent work by the University of Oxford, published in ‘The Royal Society’ has been able to conclude that does not interfere with well-being.
The benefits in the short and medium term
Two years following his first study on video games and well-being, Przybylski has reanalyzed, at the University of Oxfordthis aspect in order to be able contribute, to policy makers, health professionals and game developersthe keys to how these influence the well-being of the players.
To do this, they analyzed 38,935 players to estimate the causal effects of video games on well-being: the extent to which the amount of play (the average number of daily hours played over a two-week period) affects the well-being of players.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Apex Legends, Eve Online or Gran Turismo Sport were some of the games that served as a study, choosing active players as participants. During the study, participants were required to report how often they experienced six positive and negative feelings on a scale from never to always.
The results showed that the motivation intrinsicfruit enjoy a thing by its own action, had a very positive effect in wellness. Secondly, the results that were obtained in the game, that is, the motivation extrinsicaffected negatively al affection and satisfaction with life.
Although both results differ, as a conclusion, the impact of time spent playing video games on well-being is probably too small to be subjectively noticeable. This is a topic yet to be explored as this study was only able to analyze 7 game titles, only scratching the surface of the world of video games. For future studies, it is necessary to take into account the situations, motivations and contexts in which people play.
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