Video games may level up your mental health

i think, it's still depended on the games, multiplayer could lead people to be angrier and often makes them to not have empathy toward real human.
i encourage them to play split screen games, to raise their sense of sportive treats.

i often lecture to student or campus about games for them to learn from games. i encourage them to play games, especially single player games, to learn many things, including life skills.
for me video games are kind of non-structure education for people, actually, based on my experiences.
 
games like stellar babes, first descendant sure do! Concord though makes you wanna puke. bad for both physical and mental health.
 
IAmRei said:
i think, it's still depended on the games, multiplayer could lead people to be angrier and often makes them to not have empathy toward real human.
i encourage them to play split screen games, to raise their sense of sportive treats.

i often lecture to student or campus about games for them to learn from games. i encourage them to play games, especially single player games, to learn many things, including life skills.
for me video games are kind of non-structure education for people, actually, based on my experiences.
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I am almost ashamed to admit that I've learned probably most of my history knowledge through games ....

Whether it's been historical and wargame strategy, or simulations of historical events and machines.

But I don't think I gained many life skills from gaming as such.
 
Interested Games GIF by South Park

I've been telling my family this for ages but they don't believe me
 
ToadMan said:
I am almost ashamed to admit that I've learned probably most of my history knowledge through games ....

Whether it's been historical and wargame strategy, or simulations of historical events and machines.

But I don't think I gained many life skills from gaming as such.
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It might be laughable, but i learnt parking and driving from GTA SA and VC

I learn management and social from harvest moon psx, i learnt economic and managerial from JRPGs, it might not much life skills, but still, games trully affect my life without me noticing before
 
Some games can be a little stressful or frustrating for me, otherwise, they certainly improve several cognitive skills.
 
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theStartupSound said:
I learned many english words and phrases through games. And I got in touch with a lot of 80s music through Vice City :)
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There's the bit where the characters dress as cops...

I still always say "bit tight around the crotch though" when I'm trying on new pants or shorts.

Haven't yet had someone say "mine too" though.



Funny how it's that i remember from vice city! 🤣
 
Holding all the frustration in my belly while for the 125th time I'm running towards the boss area in Dark Souls.... Asking why do I torture myself like this, and then I remember that it's healthy and good for you.
 
deeptech said:
Holding all the frustration in my belly while for the 125th time I'm running towards the boss area in Dark Souls.... Asking why do I torture myself like this, and then I remember that it's healthy and good for you.
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Yeah....

Gets you ready for the commute to work Another day another dollar and boss battle.
 
I took a brief look at that article. It's based on a self-report survey of 97K people in Japan.

So the first things to note are:

- It's a self-report survey, not an experiment. So despite the headline, no cause and effect statements can be made.

- Presumably, most of these people are Japanese, and they play mostly Japanese games. Results might not generalize to other countries.

They found the people who had a console, and played games on them, had improved mental health over their peers, however those people who played for over three hours a day saw diminishing additional benefits. They also found the simple act of owning a console was linked to improved life satisfaction, and helped reduce their psychological distress.
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Correlation doesn't equal causation. There are many potential confounds here that haven't been mentioned. To name an obvious one, maybe the people who own a console (as opposed to those who don't) are better off financially, and it is their higher income that contributes to their improved life satisfaction, rather than merely owning a console.

It makes sense that any positive correlation would drop off for people who played 3+ hours a day.

They also note that the survey was completed during covid, so that could've impacted the results.


I'd like to believe that playing games improves mental health, but I doubt that's true - as a general statement, anyhow. It may be true for some people, at some times, with some games. But overall, on average, for most people? Doubt it. In fact, I believe there is data suggesting the opposite (although I'm not sure how strong that data is).

p.s. "Playing Switch within the survey month improved mental health by 0.81 s.d. (95% CI 0.53–1.10, P < 0.001), while playing PS5 resulted in a 0.20 s.d. (95% CI 0.05–0.36, P = 0.012) improvement." So there you go. Playing Switch is 4 x better for you than playing PS5. ;p

I'm very suspicious of their statistical methods. They are using something called causal modeling, which is a statistical method to try to wring causal relationships out of purely correlational data. That sounds quite fishy to me. I don't know enough about causal modeling and don't have the time/patience to dig in depth, but it's not something I have much confidence in. Researchers like to do this a lot - try to derive causal inferences from correlational data. I can see why it's popular - correlations are very easy to obtain, and it's much harder and more expensive (sometimes impractical) to run experiments. But everything I know about experimental design and statistics indicates that you cannot derive causation from correlation, no matter what you call your statistical manipulation.

That's probably more than you wanted to know, lol.
 
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I managed to survive long enough to get SMTV Godborn Satan's health halfway, then he magatsuhi skilled it all back to full in one unlucky turn.
 
It will be interesting to see our generation get old and see if the rates of Alzheimer's, dementia, Parkinson's, etc go down or up.

I'm banking on them going down, even if it's slightly.

Keeping the brain active and constantly utilizing it which games do helps promote brain health.
 
ToadMan said:
I am almost ashamed to admit that I've learned probably most of my history knowledge through games ....

Whether it's been historical and wargame strategy, or simulations of historical events and machines.

But I don't think I gained many life skills from gaming as such.
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Training is fake as Andrew Tate said, you got iq, you win the game, but you must be generous with your intel, not selfish.
 
"They also found the simple act of owning a console was linked to improved life satisfaction,"

Maybe there is a bit of hope for the Xbox fans afterall.


Seriously though, that is kind of a no-brainer.
The same could possibly be said for pets: the simple act of owning a pet could be linked to improved life satisfaction.
 
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Studies like this have to take confounding factors into account. Like if the person's parents were addicts, they might spend all the family money on substances and not have money for a console. It could be that parents like that might cause problems for a kid other than just being deprived of gaming.
 
fastest finger said:
The problem is, in my experience at least, having poor mental health kills my interest in gaming (and anything else I usually enjoy).
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Absolutely. It's difficult to be interested in gaming when I'm neck deep in anxiety or if I'm having a major panic attack. I had one psychiatrist suggest gaming as distraction therapy and the idea was sound… but if I'm in a full blown panic attack, doing something like gaming only compounds the irrational panic.
 
Kinda agree and disagree at the same time, taking myself for example just in games:

Good Mental Health: finishing something hard or been waiting a long time for, winning MP matches or replaying a classic, right now I'm going through a really hard time in my Marriage and Retro games on my Switch and the odd Platinum grind on PS5 is really helping

However I find its not that much of a distraction either atm, its probaly just my mindset right now but I have no interest in new games atm

Bad: My wife is a big CoD player and suffers from Childhood Sexual PTSD and though its a nice distraction, its also too much of an escapism for her that the irl problems don't get addressed, something I also see in MMO's, a friend of mine failed his last year of University as he got addicted to FFXiV to deal with the stress
 
Nydius said:
Absolutely. It's difficult to be interested in gaming when I'm neck deep in anxiety or if I'm having a major panic attack. I had one psychiatrist suggest gaming as distraction therapy and the idea was sound… but if I'm in a full blown panic attack, doing something like gaming only compounds the irrational panic.
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Interestingly enough, playing something colorful and simple does calm me down, Tetirs and Puyo Puyo are supposed to be really good for that
 
Funny story, my family moved to San Diego when I was in 7th grade and I ended up in a militant PE class where (American) football was the main focus. I had no idea how it was played, so used Tecmo Super Bowl on the NES to learn.

That game saved me from both physical and social annihilation.
 
Nydius said:
Absolutely. It's difficult to be interested in gaming when I'm neck deep in anxiety or if I'm having a major panic attack. I had one psychiatrist suggest gaming as distraction therapy and the idea was sound… but if I'm in a full blown panic attack, doing something like gaming only compounds the irrational panic.
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Yeah, telling someone who's having a panic attack to just turn their attention to something else is pretty bad advice.
 
I'm pretty steady these days, but I used to have the occasional clinical-grade episode.

One was going on for days. I was not functional. My wife heard that VR can be therapeutic so she went and got a psvr. Miraculously, it worked.

So I've obviously liked VR ever since but that was my origin story as a VR believer.

Last weekend, I was having some stress get on top of me. It was something I couldn't do anything about and I was not coping well. It wasn't anything like a total breakdown but it sucked and was ruining my weekend. I knew what to do... Put on the psvr 2 and get away to no man's sky. Worked like a charm.
 
My rule is, only play a game that you're actively enjoying. That's why I bounce between a variety of games. Something incredible yesterday might not hit the following day. I always get back to them though and finish them up. I find it just leads to frustration if you force yourself to stick with something. Gaming is supposed to be fun, so I want to make sure I'm actually having fun.

If no game seems fun, I'll take a walk with the dogs or go hang out with the wife. Everyone needs a reset/break from time to time.
 
I've been trying to lose some weight this summer and stop snacking so I got some good games. They help me with restlessness during vacation times as I get so much more immersed in comparison to movies or books so I don't feel that fake hunger. So far I've lost around 20lbs(10kg). I do think there can be some benefits from playing games, but all in good measure. If you start using gaming as a way to escape your life and not deal with things, or you sit too many hours every day so that your body starts to suffer, then I think it will negate any benefits.
 
Trilobit said:
I've been trying to lose some weight this summer and stop snacking so I got some good games. They help me with restlessness during vacation times as I get so much more immersed in comparison to movies or books so I don't feel that fake hunger. So far I've lost around 20lbs(10kg). I do think there can be some benefits from playing games, but all in good measure. If you start using gaming as a way to escape your life and not deal with things, or you sit too many hours every day so that your body starts to suffer, then I think it will negate any benefits.
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I play alot of VR simply because I stand when I play. Calories burnt is probably negligible for me but it's nice to simply stand and get a bit of movement in. I need to get a rhythm game because that definitely would burn some calories.

Edit- Congrats on the weight loss. That's awesome.
 
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fart town usa said:
I play alot of VR simply because I stand when I play. Calories burnt is probably negligible for me but it's nice to simply stand and get a bit of movement in. I need to get a rhythm game because that definitely would burn some calories.

Edit- Congrats on the weight loss. That's awesome.
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Thanks!

I've been considering a Quest more and more and I think I'll dip my toes some day. I think I'd really love Beat Saber and similar stuff to get a nice move on more often.
 
Killjoy-NL said:
"They also found the simple act of owning a console was linked to improved life satisfaction,"

Maybe there is a bit of hope for the Xbox fans afterall.


Seriously though, that is kind of a no-brainer.
The same could possibly be said for pets: the simple act of owning a pet could be linked to improved life satisfaction.
Click to expand...

Also applies to a gimp.

I get endless satisfaction from his muffled utterances and the light reflections of his tight neoprene outfit. When I get him out of the box that is.
 
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