date of publication:
July 28, 2022 17:41 GMT
Update date: July 28, 2022 19:25 GMT
A new study confirmed that playing video games continuously for long periods does not affect the mental health of players, after studying the impact of 7 popular games on 39,000 people, who are the strength of the study sample.
The study, published by a group of researchers at the University of Oxford in the journal “Royal Society Open Science”, indicated that there is no relationship in any way between video games and human health, especially since the research team cooperated with a group of video game publishers and developers to find out the truth of that relationship.
The study was based on a research sample that includes 39,000 people, so that each of them plays at least one of the 7 popular games, which are Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Apex Legends, Eve Online, Forza Horizon 4, Gran Tursimo Sport, and finally The Crew. .
Game publishers submitted player data over a period of 6 weeks, and then the research team surveyed study participants over a three-week period.
With the help of game publishers, the research team was able to accurately determine some of the important variables for the study, such as the time spent by the players in the study within each game, and thus the research team has a reliable and accurate source for that data, without relying only on the memory of the player himself.
Determining the impact of games on the health of players relied on two tools, the first is to determine the emotional experience that players go through while playing video games, whether it is a frightening, happy or stressful experience, and the second depends on the Cantrell Psychological Stability Scale, which is based on the respondents’ answer regarding their satisfaction with their lives in their current state.
The research team also surveyed the respondents’ opinions about their experience within certain games, such as the extent to which they feel independent in making the decision to choose one game over another.
The study concluded that spending a long or short time with video games does not leave positive or negative effects on the physical, psychological and mental health of people, and the psychological state of people does not determine the time they spend with video games.
The study authors pointed out that any role that video games play in affecting the quality of human life is very small, and players need to play an additional 10 hours a day, to feel that impact significantly.
But the study also found a number of evidence that proves that players’ motivations to experience video games may have a clear impact on their health safety. When they choose to play video games because they really want to, the impact on health and psychological safety is positive, on the Reversing the negative impact of people having to play video games.
The study indicated that there are still more methods that have not yet been tried to discover the nature of the effects of video games on the psychological state and physical health of players, as the study examined a few thousand video games, explaining that researchers need to look at how motivations towards playing affect the extent of The quality of a video game environment can change people’s experience, and they need to understand whether people’s individual characteristics actually influence how well video games affect their health.