Playing video games is good for you ‘as long as you stick to three-hour limit’

Researchers in Japan find owning a games console can lead to better mental wellbeing

Playing video games is good for you as long as you stick to three hours or fewer per day, a study has found.
The potential impact of gaming on people’s health is a hotly debated topic among scientists with studies showing a range of both advantages and disadvantages.
But a study of almost 100,000 people in Japan has shown that playing video games on a console can improve mental health and life satisfaction while also relieving stress.
Scientists at Nihon University in Tokyo gathered data on people who entered into a lottery that was in place in Japan between 2020 and 2022 when, due to Covid lockdowns, there was a supply issue with consoles alongside increased demand.
More than 8,000 people entered into the lottery to be able to buy a console – either a PlayStation 5 or a Nintendo Switch.
Survey responses from the owners revealed that those who had a console had slightly better mental wellbeing. However, about one in nine people said they played their console for more than three hours a day, which scientists said led to detrimental effects.
“Our natural experiment showed that video gaming positively impacted mental wellbeing, but gaming for over three hours had decreasing psychological benefits,” the authors wrote in their paper, published in the Nature Human Behaviour peer-reviewed journal.
Data in the study revealed that children and women who owned a Nintendo Switch saw more positive outcomes, whereas those who benefited the most from having a PS5 were adult men.
Pete Etchells, a professor of psychology and science communication at Bath Spa University, who was not involved in the research, said: “The present study is so interesting; it uses a survey-based method that takes advantage of a natural experiment that happened in Japan during Covid to essentially test for causal relationships.”
He explained: “Due to a lack of games console availability during the pandemic, lotteries were held to allocate the little stock available. The researchers in this study took advantage of this to try and understand the impacts of video game play as a function of that lottery outcome.
“The results show that broadly, there was a positive relationship with games console ownership and mental wellbeing.”
He added that the study was well conducted and thorough, but acknowledged that the findings could be influenced by the pandemic itself, which came with its own mental pressures.
Gaming is a booming industry, with more than 10 million gamers in the UK alone.
Academics have long tried to understand the psychological impact of this form of entertainment, which is particularly popular among young people and children.
Previous studies found a range of results when investigating the mental impact of video games, with the World Health Organisation now considering gaming addiction to be a mental health condition.
Studies done in labs looking to find causal links have been flawed and showed benefits, whereas observational trials are unable to infer causation. A 2021 study from the University of Oxford, for example, used real data from more than 2,500 players of popular games and found “a small positive relation between game-play and affective wellbeing”.
However, a 2012 lab-based study from Grenoble Alpes University in France found that violent video games induce stress, which can lead to aggressive behaviour in some players.