Is playing the game good or bad?
These concerns have influenced policy decisions that affect millions of people. The World Health Organization considers “gaming disorder” to be a disease. China restricts people under the age of 18 from playing games more than 3 hours a week so that minors do not become “addicted to games”.
But in recent years, more and more research has shown that playing video games has benefits, such as improving cognition, reducing stress, and strengthening communication skills.
The truth is that we still don’t fully understand whether playing video games is good or bad for health, and it’s not certain that playing video games has any effect, according to a new study.
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There is still no scientific evidence to confirm that playing video games is beneficial or harmful to health. Photo: MIT Technology Review.
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Specifically, research published in the journal Royal Society Open Science shows that time spent playing video games has no negative or positive effects on the health and psychology of players.
Researchers from the University of Oxford analyzed the playing time of seven games by 38,935 players. These titles are Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Apex Legends, Eve Online, Forza Horizon 4, Gran Turismo Sport, Outriders and The Crew 2. Playtime data is provided by the game manufacturer.
The health and psychological status of players is assessed through 3 surveys, each survey is 2 weeks apart. At the survey, players reported how often they experienced “pleasant” or “unpleasant” feelings, and self-measured their satisfaction with life.
As a result, time spent playing video games had little or no impact on health and psychology. In contrast, psychological status also did not affect the duration of gaming.
Andrew Przybylski, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute and co-author of the new study, says the evidence base behind the WHO and China’s policies on video games is not convincing enough. affect many people.
The doubts and prejudices surrounding video games today are the same as those of the past that rock music and TV are bad for people. These prejudices have no factual evidence.
A 2020 meta-analysis in the journal Royal Society Open Science, which reviewed 28 studies from previous years, found no evidence to suggest a long-term link between video games and aggression. force.
Lower-quality studies, which did not use data normalized measures, were more likely to overstate the impact of video games on player aggression, whereas higher-quality studies tend to find negligible effects.
Overall, the Oxford study says it’s inconclusive about how video games affect us.
(According to Zing)
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