Gaming is good for mental health as per an Oxford University study

Video games and gaming, in general, has been criticized for being a bad influence on people. A majority of the critics attack gaming as an unproductive activity highlighting addiction as one of the major problems. Most of these critics have quoted improper and outdated studies to back up their claims. Though gaming does come with a very real problem of addiction, it also comes with a number of positive aspects. Most of these aspects are often brushed under the carpet just to highlight the bad. Several newer and updated studies are also coming out that reaffirm the good that we know while debunking the old. In the same line, a new study from Oxford University just came out outlining some important aspects of gaming. Here is everything you need to know.

Gaming is good for mental health as per Oxford University research, details

As noted above, Oxford University conducted a new study that outlines that video games are good for mental wellbeing. Unlike most studies in the past, this was the first to make use of “actual play-time data” for the results. The team of researchers used the play-time data to link the results with the psychological questionnaires. It used the results from the questionnaire along with the total time spent playing the game as per the cloud saves. For some context, past studies depended on the test subjects to “self-report” the amount of time they spent while playing the game. This often resulted in inaccurate results while drawing up results between mental health and video games.

According to The Guardian, the study used Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville. The report noted that the players who played more games “tended to report greater ‘wellbeing’”. This contrasts with the reports stating that video games harmed mental health. Lead researcher of the project, Andrew Przybylski stated, “This is about bringing games into the fold of psychology research that’s not a dumpster fire.” He also added, “This lets us explain and understand games as a leisure activity. It was a quest to figure out is data collected by gaming companies vaguely useful for academic and health policy research?”

Animal Crossing New Horizons

Przybylski noted that he was surprised by how little data gaming companies had about their players. He was also surprised by how little hard data was used in previous studies about the harms or benefits of gaming. As per the report, he also stated that researchers will learn more about gaming with more studies. Researchers are likely to have more concrete findings on the supposed positives and negatives of gaming and the different type of games.