THE ISLAND OF STATEN, NEW YORK — Oxford Internet Institute found “little to no evidence” relating video game time with overall well-being in huge research they conducted back in 2007. Using data from 39,000 international adult gamers, researchers collaborated with seven popular video game producers to perform the study, which was published in the journal of the Royal Society Open Science.
People’s well-being was measured using a three-wave survey, which included objective in-game behavior and responses based on the results of a three-wave questionnaire that included questions about life satisfaction, rage, and other emotions. In order to perform their research, the scientists correlated the gaming data with survey responses. Using actual game data, this study is thought to be one of the largest of its sort.
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Professor Andrew Przybylski, an Oxford Internet Institute, senior research fellow, noted in a press release that “this intriguing study brings together enormous volumes of real-playing data acquired by games developers and provided by players.” As a result of our research, we’ve been able to accurately track how long users spend playing these games over time, which was previously unavailable.
The findings of this study were in direct conflict with those of a study done by the same team in 2020. Video game players reported higher levels of happiness than non-players in this smaller study. Those who participated in more recent studies, which lasted six weeks, found that they needed to play for an additional 10 hours a day to see any positive changes in their personality traits.
Playing was viewed as a more relevant measure of well-being than the purpose for doing so. In contrast to those who felt compelled to play video games, those who did so because they felt free to do so had higher levels of well-being. We found no indication of any link between gaming and well-being, but we know we need a lot more player data from a lot more platforms to generate the kind of deeper understanding required to guide policy and shape recommendations to parents and medical experts,” said Przybylski.
More research needs to be done in order to better understand the long-term effects of video games on human health, according to the researchers. It’s time for gaming platforms to make it easy for gamers to share their data with researchers who are trying to better understand the long-term effects of playing video games.
At this point, “there is not enough data and evidence for policymakers and regulators to start adopting laws and rules to restrict gameplay among certain groups in a population,” says Dr. Matti Vuorre, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute. It is my hope that all internet platforms, not just gaming firms, will allow users to submit their data to independent researchers.
According to the study authors, all of the data used in the study was anonymous and so may be made public, which could help with future research. Transparency is critical when analyzing video games, as this project demonstrates. Researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute like Dr. Niklas Johannes were able to make the study’s findings open to the public since the participants’ identities were kept private.
Furthermore, the data can be used by other researchers to test their own research issues,” said Johannes. As an illustration of the use of these data, we used them to demonstrate that playing two online shooters had no influence on aggression.