After all, spending hours playing PlayStation is not bad for your health
Experts say that this hobby does not interfere with well-being, although it is not normal to feel the need to play.
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Good news for fans of this hobby.
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If you are part of the group of people who get worried when they see their siblings, boyfriends or friends, tied to the consoles, you can relax. It’s just that, according to a new study published this Wednesday, July 27, by the University of Oxford, the time spent playing video games has no significant impact on the well-being or mental health of players.
“We found little or no evidence of a causal link between video games and well-being,” reads the results of the research, which analyzed nearly 40,000 gamers over the age of 18 for six weeks. The search published in the magazine “The Royal Society Open Science” generally allays fears that the habit of playing games on the computer or consoles negatively affects the well-being and mental health of fans of this hobby.
To study the effects of this relationship, players were asked about the emotions they experience in their daily lives, including their level of happiness, sadness, anger or frustration. In addition to the surveys carried out, the researchers used time data provided by the creators of seven video games, such as “Animal Crossing”, “Forza Horizon 4″ or “The Crew 2”.
Although the conclusions point out that this hobby interferes with mental health, experts say that it is not normal for them to feel the need to play. “If players felt they had to play, they felt worse. If they played for pleasure, the data did not suggest that it affected their mental health. It seemed to give them a strong positive feeling,” says Andrew K. Przybylski, one of the study’s authors. However, he points out that it is not possible to determine a cause-effect link, because the consequences of playing, whether positive or negative, would only be noticeable if a video game user played more than ten hours a day.
This is the Monday research, carried out in recent months, which states that playing console does not have as many harms as one might think. In an interview with NiT, psychologist Rute Agulhas had already explained: “When used in a responsible and healthy way, the benefits of video games can be very diverse, as they stimulate the brain, increasing its plasticity, learning, attention and the concentration”.
The most recent research thus contradicts the classification made in 2018 by the World Health Organization, which considered that video game disorders are a mental health problem.
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