Influence of Esports on stress: A systematic review

Esports is an electronic sport known as competitive video gaming, which has seen tremendous growth over the past few years. Unlike traditional sports such as hockey, baseball, and soccer, Esports is an interconnection of multiple platforms, computing, gaming, and media into a sport event. A systematic review was conducted to collate and review all the research studies concerning Esports from a health perspective and analyze various physical and psychological distress regarding Esports. Relevant published papers were identified through the electronic databases Google Scholar, PubMed, and Research Gate. As a result of the systematic research review, seven articles were identified that investigated three major domains (i) Esports and physical issues, (ii) Esports and psychological distress, and (iii) Esports and addiction. The result indicated that Esports excessive play and its competitive nature lead to physical and psychological problems. Physical issues include eye fatigue, blurry vision, low back pain, tension headache, wrist pain, hand pain, and poor posture while gaming. Psychological issues include depression, anxiety, apathy, uncooperative attitude, tense, sleep disturbances, mental distress, aggressive affect and behaviors, distress in social life, and emotional disturbances. The studies also found that long hours of online gaming was associated with the presence of depression, social phobia, obsession–compulsion, interpersonal sensitivity, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, psychoticism attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and gaming addiction. This review draws insight into the problematic side of Esports and suggested that future studies must focus on the interventions to deal with the negative impact of Esports.