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Video game play is positively correlated with well-being

People have never played more video games, and many stakeholders are worried that this activity might be bad for players. So far, research has not had adequate data to test whether these worries are justified and if policymakers should act to regulate video game play time. We attempt to provide much...

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Autores principales: Johannes, Niklas, Vuorre, Matti, Przybylski, Andrew K.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8074794/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33972879
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.202049
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author Johannes, Niklas
Vuorre, Matti
Przybylski, Andrew K.
author_facet Johannes, Niklas
Vuorre, Matti
Przybylski, Andrew K.
author_sort Johannes, Niklas
collection PubMed
description People have never played more video games, and many stakeholders are worried that this activity might be bad for players. So far, research has not had adequate data to test whether these worries are justified and if policymakers should act to regulate video game play time. We attempt to provide much-needed evidence with adequate data. Whereas previous research had to rely on self-reported play behaviour, we collaborated with two games companies, Electronic Arts and Nintendo of America, to obtain players' actual play behaviour. We surveyed players of Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville and Animal Crossing: New Horizons for their well-being, motivations and need satisfaction during play, and merged their responses with telemetry data (i.e. logged game play). Contrary to many fears that excessive play time will lead to addiction and poor mental health, we found a small positive relation between game play and affective well-being. Need satisfaction and motivations during play did not interact with play time but were instead independently related to well-being. Our results advance the field in two important ways. First, we show that collaborations with industry partners can be done to high academic standards in an ethical and transparent fashion. Second, we deliver much-needed evidence to policymakers on the link between play and mental health.
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spelling pubmed-80747942021-05-09 Video game play is positively correlated with well-being Johannes, Niklas Vuorre, Matti Przybylski, Andrew K. R Soc Open Sci Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience People have never played more video games, and many stakeholders are worried that this activity might be bad for players. So far, research has not had adequate data to test whether these worries are justified and if policymakers should act to regulate video game play time. We attempt to provide much-needed evidence with adequate data. Whereas previous research had to rely on self-reported play behaviour, we collaborated with two games companies, Electronic Arts and Nintendo of America, to obtain players' actual play behaviour. We surveyed players of Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville and Animal Crossing: New Horizons for their well-being, motivations and need satisfaction during play, and merged their responses with telemetry data (i.e. logged game play). Contrary to many fears that excessive play time will lead to addiction and poor mental health, we found a small positive relation between game play and affective well-being. Need satisfaction and motivations during play did not interact with play time but were instead independently related to well-being. Our results advance the field in two important ways. First, we show that collaborations with industry partners can be done to high academic standards in an ethical and transparent fashion. Second, we deliver much-needed evidence to policymakers on the link between play and mental health. The Royal Society 2021-02-17 /pmc/articles/PMC8074794/ /pubmed/33972879 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.202049 Text en © 2021 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
Johannes, Niklas
Vuorre, Matti
Przybylski, Andrew K.
Video game play is positively correlated with well-being
title Video game play is positively correlated with well-being
title_full Video game play is positively correlated with well-being
title_fullStr Video game play is positively correlated with well-being
title_full_unstemmed Video game play is positively correlated with well-being
title_short Video game play is positively correlated with well-being
title_sort video game play is positively correlated with well-being
topic Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8074794/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33972879
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.202049
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