Hello my loyal fan(s)! This week I am going to talk to you about the links between video games and mental health.
“Why?” You ask.
Well, I’ve just arrived home from England after spending the last five weeks bouncing from the United States, to the Dominican Republic, Canada, and England for work. If you haven’t guessed, I am feeling a bit drained and more than a little overwhelmed from the amount of work. So my topic this week is all about exploring how mental health is affected by casual video game players.
Video games have long been scrutinized for their violence, gore, and sexual content. Some research backs up the claims that children are more likely to exhibit violent behavior based on playing games that glamorize it. However, when we argue points about a topic, if we spend time focusing on one argument over another, sometimes our perspective gets shifted. I came across an interesting study published in the Frontiers in Psychology journal that examines the research related to both negative and positive effects on mental health. You can read the full article at the bottom of this post. For those of you who prefer the more entertaining version, though, stick with me.
What is interesting about articles that examine negative effects of video games is that the research relies uncommonly heavily on self-reported measures. This, of course, is leading to discourse about whether studies are using enough empirical data to draw conclusions. Further, other studies that look at feelings of isolation or loneliness as they are related to video games are being scrutinized anew to understand if there is a chicken and egg situation going on. You know, is loneliness a symptom that exists because of gaming or is the feeling of isolation existent before a person picks up that first controller?
Digging in to this article, some of the key points are that playing video games allows for a user to become immersed in an environment. This, by nature, decreases stress by allowing the user to become emotionally invested in the playing of the game. This behavior is directly related to increased happiness. Further, video games, like World of Warcraft (WoW), an MMO, foster a sense of accomplishment as players are able to complete tasks and gain valuable ‘loot’. Games like WoW also provide a sense of community in a world where many people feel disconnected from one another as a result of the explosion of digital distractions. This article points out arguments have been made that “on-line communication is being used to enhance both the quantity and quality of communication between friends, leading to greater closeness and intimacy.” With an MMO, the user is not simply an isolated gamer in his living room, toiling away at some impossible task. They are instead a community of gamers communicating, and working together, to conquer some impossible task. When working as a community, gamers have a sense of belonging, consistent communication, true immersion, and emotional bonding.
I will stop short of telling you that gaming is all good news, but there are, clearly, a lot of benefits that can come from casual gameplay.
I am going to wrap up this post here, so it remains a touch shorter than the research article I have based this post on.
P.S. This is me in London, shamelessly playing a game on my phone while my partner was probably expecting some kind of conversation. Like I said before, its not all good news!
See you next week!
For you academics out there: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3978245/
Gamer Culture 