Impact of video games in adolescents' well-being

There is no consensus among scholars on video games effectively being good or bad for individuals ^[1]. However, we aim to outline a number of arguments for either side below to empower you with the knowledge to make more informed decisions.

Video games sometimes show violent content that may influence violent behavior connected to higher perceived sense of competence and autonomy, and less control of the management of social skills in players, which is considered to be detrimental to adolescents’ well-being.

Nonetheless, adolescents may learn how to cope with violence by recognizing problematic social, cognitive and mental issues, which may benefit cognitive training, prosocial behavior, and the disregard of unpleasant mood states, successfully dealing with stressful situations ^[1]. Many authors show the need for more studies and influences on violent behavior, such as personality traits, previous experience playing violent video games, and demonstrated real-life violent behavior ^{[2] [3]}.

While we understand that this may not sound that reassuring, something practical you can do is monitor your child’s behavior. If you notice heightened aggression during or immediately after gameplay, consider communicating with your child about its triggers and solutions in order to reach a better understanding together on how to avoid it in future. As a practical example, if you notice your child becomes increasingly aggressive the more consecutive hours they spend playing, perhaps limiting their gameplay time to a shorter period per day may be helpful.

One other aspect that could be detrimental to adolescents’ well-being is addiction and problematic behavior.

A video game can be considered an “addiction” as a metaphor for substance dependence ^[4]. This occurs by measuring the response to gaming on a neurological level, identifying brain reactions to the brain reward cycle.

There is no current consensus on what is the exact definition and origins of a problematic behavior, which indicates more research is necessary on the etiology and definitions of excessive gaming.

However, even if video games are thought to exercise cognitive, educational, physical and mental health functions, while bringing the “fun” factor as a motivator to play video games, some researchers believe video games are detrimental to the emotional and mental well-being as indicated by happiness, depression, stress and anxiety indicators ^[5].

There are five contextual factors that follow the displacement theory (a theory that proposes displacement is a type of emotional self-protection in which negatively perceived feelings are transferred to someone or something else considered less harmful) to be regarded when researching the associations between well-being and the frequency of video gaming, which are as follows ^[5] :

1. Who plays video games with whom?

According to the displacement theory, playing video games is socially harmful as the time allocated to video games is taken away from meaningful social interactions ^[6][7]. However, multiplayer games highlight important social interactions as they are exercised when multiple individuals play together competitively or cooperatively ^[8][9][10].

2. What types of video games are more beneficial for your children?

The genre of video games is an important influential factor between psychological well-being and playing video games. One example is exergames habitually played in Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Kinect or Nintendo Switch, which demand players to physically move and engage with the game in order to progress ^[11][12]. In this case, exergames serve the motivational goal of getting and keeping physically healthy.

Another important aspect to consider when mentioning video games is violence as it is frequently implicated as a trigger for diminished psychological well-being ^[13][14]. More research is needed to understand the influence of video games in the onset of violence, such as video game genres, players’ preference on gaming mechanics, and players’ gender.

3. Why are children interested in video games?

Motivation has been researched in regards to its connection to the desire of playing video games, particularly through the self-determination theory (which, according to Ryan and Deci, suggests that the motivation behind playing video games is connected to the players’ basic needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness ^[15]).

A motivation factor that connects video gaming to psychological well-being is playing video games as means to cope emotionally in what is called harmonious video gaming (as opposed to obsessive video gaming) ^[16]. It could be to distract themselves or to self-regulate negative feelings that arise from life dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, and low positive affect – with the latter increasing when playing video games ^[17]. Research on the increase in positive affect, in which one group of clinically depressed patients was tasked to play an action video game, and a control group was tasked to be in the waitlist, showed that the first group presented lower maladaptive rumination than those in the control group ^[17][18].

Some authors suggest that playing video games may be a form of coping originating from psychological distress rather than video games causing lower psychological well-being ^[19][20][21].

4. How does the time and day influence children when they are playing video games?

The impact of the time and day when people play video games may influence psychological well-being. Indeed, choosing to play at nighttime affects sleep as video games increase alertness and arousal ^[22][23].

One study found that young adults showed increased risk of depression symptoms when playing between 10pm and 6am, which was not found in young adults that played in earlier periods ^[24].

Regarding the day of the week in which video gaming may influence psychological well-being, playing on week-days correlates to worse quality of sleep, as school or work prevents playtime during the day, whereas the weekend brings more schedule flexibility ^[25][26].

5. How much is too much video gaming?

The Goldilocks hypothesis proposes that the moderate use of media/technology should not cause adverse effects, although excessive use is related to less time available to perform other activities, such as personal hygiene, feeding, socializing with family and friends, being academically or professionally successful ^[27]. Adolescents’ impulsive and reflective behavior associated with the fear of missing out (FoMO) may lead to excessive use of media/technology, which highlights the need for disengagement of these inputs to a more moderate use ^[28] or the need to diagnose a Gaming Disorder ^[29].

More and more research is finding that playing video games is beneficial on psychological well-being regarding increased states of relaxation and visuospatial processing, as well as improved moods ^[30][31][32].

In conclusion, the positive effects of moderate (rather than excessive or null) use of technology/media seems to outweigh the negative outcomes to psychological well-being.

Similarly, other outcomes may also controversially be considered both positive and negative, depending on their assessment:

• Social aspects may show positive factors of relatedness, social belonging, friendships online; on the other hand, it may show escapism and social isolation from meaningful real-life interactions by adolescents’ preference over gaming.
• Psychological aspects may associate aggression, and depressive and anxiety symptoms to gaming; although some authors support that people learn how to cope with their emotions through gaming.
• Learning in regards to absorbing knowledge and mastery of skills, according to the game transfer phenomena; although, some negative aspects of learning are learned behaviors associated with aggression that may lead to desensitization.

Video games are not considered to be good or bad to individuals; instead, positive and negative aspects should be weighed in the discussion.

On one hand, there are negative effects related to social isolation, decrease of positive affect, and obsessive gaming.

On the other hand, there are positive effects regarding increase of knowledge, mastery of skills, learning to cope with emotions, and development of social interactions online.

If you believe your child is presenting signs of addictive or problematic behavior associated with obsessive gaming, there may be a valid reason to suspect of a Gaming Disorder. In this case, you should contact your primary doctor to have the child redirected to a psychiatric/psychological assessment. If you’d like to assess if your child is at risk of developing a gaming addiction, please refer to the survey below.

If you would like to share yours and/or your child’s experience, strengths and hope to help and support each other recover and heal from problems resulting from excessive video gaming, please reach out to associations in your area, such as On-Line Gamers Anonymous (https://www.olganon.org/) or other useful resources (https://www.techaddiction.ca/index.html).

We hope you found this information useful. Although it can be overwhelming for non-gamers, we hope you were able to find practical takeaways on gaming and its impacts on your child’s psychological well-being.