Video game

Should You Be Worried About Your Child’s Video Game Habit? – menshealth.com


Been keeping up with the news lately? If you have been, it won’t have escaped your attention that the Fortnite World Cup finals have just finished.

The tournament brought together the world’s greatest Fortnite players to compete for the largest prize pool in the history of e-sports, with $30m shared amongst the winners. But while the tournament’s champions, including British teenager Jaden Ashman, who won $1.8m to be shared with his duos partner, are still basking in their victories, much of the post-tournament analysis has been focused on whether gaming is a healthy or safe pastime for children.

This isn’t a new debate, previously the Duke of Sussex, Prince Harry, called for the uber-addictive Fortnite to be banned, while talk of whether violent video games contribute to violent behaviour has existed for as long as video games themselves.

But is gaming really worthy our outrage or are we all getting seriously stressed out about something that is just a bit of fun? We took a look at the science to see whether gaming really does affect a child’s physical and mental health.

Mental Health and Video Games

Nobody questions whether hours spent on the golf course was bad for Tiger Woods or if Magnus Carlson would be ruined by spending all of his spare time staring at a chess board, but the same can’t be said of the world’s top video gamers.

We know what you’re thinking, you can’t really equate playing golf with staring at a computer screen for hours upon hours, but is there any proof that gaming is bad for you? Well, a study published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology suggests not. The research, which looked at the affect playing video games had on mental health and the social skills of young children found that “high usage was associated with decreases in peer relationship problems and in prosocial deficits.” The study went onto state that playing videos games may actually have a positive effect on your children.

The assumption is that kids who play video games are hermits, who shy away from social settings, but this study at least proves that that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, being good at video games is much more likely to give a child confidence than destroy it, with the study finding that high usage was associated with 1.75 times the odds of high intellectual functioning, and 1.88 times the odds of high overall school competence.

Physical Health and Video Games

What about their physical health? Before she realised that gaming was a lucrative career choice, even Lisa Dallman, the mother of Fortnite World Cup finalist Ashman, had a problem with his video game habit.

The BBC reports that Dallman once threw out her son’s Xbox after an argument, while they have had numerous rows over Ashman’s eight-hour-a-day Fortnite obsession.

Ashman’s mum claimed that her son’s grades slipped as a result of playing video games, despite studies suggesting video games have a positive effect on academic performance. However, Ashman’s video game playing is excessive, and for anyone to spend eight hours a night playing video games something has give, and that thing is usually sleep.

A study published in the American Academy of Sleep Medicine found that gamers will often postpone bed time in favour of continuing to play video games. Results show that on average, gamers delayed going to bed 36 per cent of the nights they played video games, while the average delay in bedtime on the nights spent gaming was 101 minutes.

More gaming and less sleep equals poorer performance in school and poorer performance in school means… we think you know where we’re going with this.

But a lack of sleep isn’t the only health concern arising from gaming. Research published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that even a single session of video game play in healthy male adolescents is associated with an increased food intake. In other words, playing video games is bad news for your waistline.

But overeating isn’t the only danger to a gamer’s health. The NHS warn that a sedentary life spent playing video games could lead to the development of a whole host of chronic diseases, such as heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes, as well as weight gain and obesity.

So unless you’re the kind of kid, or have the kind of kid, who can make millions from a gaming habit then for your health’s sake put down the gamepad. At least, occasionally.


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