England (Commonwealth Union) – Reports of video game addiction have often shown tragic stories of people being extremely addicted to video games that they often forget to attend important activities such as attending to a child or attending an important meeting. A new study has however indicated that excessive gaming may not be as bad as many had assumed.
A recent University of Oxford, indicates that although a lot of school-age adolescents spend a lot of time gaming, it does not have a downside on the wellbeing. The OxWell Student Survey is a wide-ranging school survey of adolescent health and wellbeing in England. Over 12,000 secondary school-aged students from 12-18 years participated in the most recent survey in June-July 2021, giving details on how much they game.
Approximately 31.2% of students that participated on their gaming indicated spending at least 3.5 hours per day engaging in games on any electronic device, but 21.8% reported not engaging in any gaming. The study noted different profiles of adolescents who game for lengthy periods of time based on their psychological health, the amount of time they spent engaging in games on different electronic devices, and how much control they have over their gaming behavior. The findings indicate that a majority of the ‘heavy’ gamers had no negative effects in regard to their well-being and 44% of ‘heavy’ gamers indicated a greater wellbeing than those who engage in games less or do not engage in games at all.
Mina Fazel, Co-author of the study and Professor of Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Oxford Department of Psychiatry stated that the results are similar to that in adult gaming populations and emphasized that most do not have negative effects when gaming. “There is, however, an important subgroup of adolescents who are more likely to show signs of problematic use of gaming and lower mental health, and these findings can help us better identify these young people who are more likely to be females who are playing on their phones,” she said.
