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mill_about_smartly t1_ix1xx3f wrote

Reply to comment by CraftyRole4567 in Survey on 12,000 secondary school-aged students (12-18Y) shows that although many adolescents are spending considerable time gaming (at least 3.5hours/day),it is not having a negative impact on the wellbeing and 44% of ‘heavy’ gamers reported higher wellbeing than those who play less or don’t play by giuliomagnifico

Anxiety, depression, poor physical health...

Yeah. Kids who enjoy gaming report higher levels of "well-being" when allowed to game. Who knew

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LizardInASuit t1_ix2coh9 wrote

Poor physical health (and lower grades) maybe, but depression/anxiety would certainly reflect in subjective wellbeing questionnaires, as those factors tend to reduce wellbeing.

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CraftyRole4567 t1_ix3q1hj wrote

I know people who game a lot and are perfectly functional people, physically healthy and with lots of friends in real life. I don’t think it’s an inevitable outcome to have depression or anxiety or weight gain, but especially when we’re talking about kids this young I think that the problem is that they aren’t going to all react identically. Some of them are going to be able to maintain mental & physical health, and life/school/game balance, just fine! Some won’t. The problem is that we don’t know who’s who when they’re 12.

24 hours of gaming a week seems like a lot that young. At that age I was still figuring out what kinds of things I wanted to do, but there was time to try music lessons or different sports. (That said, I probably spent 24 hours a week reading, easily… back in the 80s my teachers worried that that would make me fat and lacking in social skills and friends! ;)

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Enthusiastically t1_ix2x8dz wrote

I imagine the researchers just asked how the kids are and all the gamers went “fine, ugh.” And got back to their games while the non gamers actually think and talk about how they are.

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