Impact of Gaming on Mental Health

[Debashis]

Hi everyone. Lets discuss the potential positive and negative effects of gaming on mental health, including social interaction, cognitive skills, addiction concerns, and strategies for maintaining a healthy gaming balance. If you ask me I would say gaming is good for our mental health. It helps not only in reducing stress but also increases its reaction time and enhances quick decision making skills. Although, we all know that too much of anything is bad for health. Gaming too comes with such drawbacks. If it is done in an optimized manner which doesn't impact your day to day work, it's all good.

Let's here from you what you feel about it.

 

[Grant]

I love gaming, it has helped with stress, anxiety and depression. It's opened me up to new ideas, and bad ideas as well haha. But I think it helps a lot in problem solving, hand eye coordination, and of course the rest you said.

I think there are some concerns when it comes to video games an addiction though. I think some people have addictive personalities, and with certain games they fall well into that addictive nature, where they can't stop playing, and make their lives about the game. I don't think there's any connection to video games and real life violence. I think there's more pushing a person to violence than watching a movie, or playing a video game.

Parents need to come into it as well. Limit your children's time with video games. Don't leave them unattended, especially when it comes to online play, you never know who is online playing with your kids.

There's a lot of pros and cons to gaming on mental health. I think the pros outweigh the cons by a lot though.

 

[Riberet19]

Video games, as everything can become an addiction and that is where the negative effects begin to arrive, if video games are played in moderation, I think the benefits far outweigh the possible negative effects, when you spend a lot of time playing you neglect many things in your life, you can neglect your social life, your family relationships, make less exercise, neglect your work life, worse eating habits or hygiene in general and much more, but these are common patterns in many addictions and it is nothing new.

If you play with moderation I think the benefits are many more, for example better coordination, better problem solving, stimulates the imagination and you have fun among many other things, I think playing video games is a good thing, but as everything in life, with moderation.

 

[Ja Sa Bong]

Playing video games in moderation is how you can benefit from it in a positive way for your health. If you're faced on the screen for too long, it will affect your eyes and probably cause eye problems in the future.

There's a way you would play, it's going to affect how you take things in reality which is why you shouldn't over do it when playing video games. If you play in moderation, you will enjoy the relaxation gaming makes one's nerves to experience.

 

[Debashis]

I love gaming, it has helped with stress, anxiety and depression. It's opened me up to new ideas, and bad ideas as well haha. But I think it helps a lot in problem solving, hand eye coordination, and of course the rest you said.

I think there are some concerns when it comes to video games an addiction though. I think some people have addictive personalities, and with certain games they fall well into that addictive nature, where they can't stop playing, and make their lives about the game. I don't think there's any connection to video games and real life violence. I think there's more pushing a person to violence than watching a movie, or playing a video game.

Parents need to come into it as well. Limit your children's time with video games. Don't leave them unattended, especially when it comes to online play, you never know who is online playing with your kids.

There's a lot of pros and cons to gaming on mental health. I think the pros outweigh the cons by a lot though.

True! I think there are few games which give a warning once a user plays it for more than 3hours or so. I've seen it in BGMI (Mobile version on PUBG in India). But people just bypass it all. Ignore and continue playing. Parents' intervention can be helpful only if they are doing it right from the young age of the child, if its late, its difficult as children tend to do things what they are asked not to. They will find a way somehow to do it.

Video games, as everything can become an addiction and that is where the negative effects begin to arrive, if video games are played in moderation, I think the benefits far outweigh the possible negative effects, when you spend a lot of time playing you neglect many things in your life, you can neglect your social life, your family relationships, make less exercise, neglect your work life, worse eating habits or hygiene in general and much more, but these are common patterns in many addictions and it is nothing new.

If you play with moderation I think the benefits are many more, for example better coordination, better problem solving, stimulates the imagination and you have fun among many other things, I think playing video games is a good thing, but as everything in life, with moderation.

Exactly! The people who are addicted to gaming and don't care about anything else apart from gaming set a very bad example for the non-gamers around them. Due to them a perception of a gamer being non-successful and unreliable in life is created.

Playing video games in moderation is how you can benefit from it in a positive way for your health. If you're faced on the screen for too long, it will affect your eyes and probably cause eye problems in the future.

There's a way you would play, it's going to affect how you take things in reality which is why you shouldn't over do it when playing video games. If you play in moderation, you will enjoy the relaxation gaming makes one's nerves to experience.

Yeah! Though those who are professional gamers, they have to play for hours everyday to be able to have the best reflex they can. Like esports athletes of CS Go.

 

[Ja Sa Bong]

Yeah! Though those who are professional gamers, they have to play for hours everyday to be able to have the best reflex they can. Like esports athletes of CS Go.

Professional gamers go extra miles to make sure they give protection to their eyes and I think they do something to keep their body in good shape to play those tournament. They might put themselves on some diet in order to be ready for such. They are not like most of us who are average gamers.

 

[Debashis]

Professional gamers go extra miles to make sure they give protection to their eyes and I think they do something to keep their body in good shape to play those tournament. They might put themselves on some diet in order to be ready for such. They are not like most of us who are average gamers.

Yeah! They workout daily, have good food, go out in nature too for a chilled out time and sleep well.

 

[Ja Sa Bong]

Yeah! They workout daily, have good food, go out in nature too for a chilled out time and sleep well.

This is what I'm talking about. They have the time to take very good care of themselves. It's not like we who kill ourselves at work from morning till evening working hours. It's why I'm certain it's impossible for me to play video games like those professional do.

 

[Debashis]

This is what I'm talking about. They have the time to take very good care of themselves. It's not like we who kill ourselves at work from morning till evening working hours. It's why I'm certain it's impossible for me to play video games like those professional do.

Hehe if you really want to do it. Give it a try. Take a break from what you do and focus on gaming for a year. Maybe stream live or upload your content as long format videos or even as shorts. See if it works for you. Who knows, you can be the next pro gamer.

 

[Ja Sa Bong]

Hehe if you really want to do it. Give it a try. Take a break from what you do and focus on gaming for a year. Maybe stream live or upload your content as long format videos or even as shorts. See if it works for you. Who knows, you can be the next pro gamer.

I can stop working for a year in order to start building on a new gaming career. My duties and responsibilities won't take time off for one year as well. I'm very sure you can understand that. It's not like if I focus on gaming only and do things which would make be become better at it that I won't be but it's because I can't.

 

[Shortie]

I am someone who suffers from mental health and I find I get easily anxious and stressed which causes migraines when I am in environments I do not feel comfortable in. Due to this, being able to shut off in a game on my Xbox One X always helps me a lot.

I wouldn't say I go over the top when it comes to gaming and I do game in moderation when I have the time but the difference it makes to my stress and anxiety levels helps me a lot.

 

[linux.poet]

I’ve watched HealthyGamerGG and the show’s host, Dr. K, talks about some negative mental health effects from too much gaming. For one thing, games can negatively impact a gamer’s ability to make plans and progress in life. In a game, plans can be laid out for you in terms of quest logs, so you don’t have to plan. This can be a detriment when you log off and there are multiple ways to do one thing that aren’t strictly laid out.

Another negative effect can be that your brain can check out of real life and basically head for retirement at 18, despite the fact that you don’t have enough money to do so. You can basically check out and avoid reality. But I think these are extreme cases.

Finally, if you spend too much time gaming, you can struggle to connect socially to people outside of a gaming environment. Gamers can also not be the best people to hang out with - tough social environment with all of the competition.

Personally, however, I haven’t really experienced any negative effects from gaming, but my games of choice have been things like spider solitaire and chess. Those seem to have strengthened my planning skills and reflexes. Chess, in particular, helped me process and heal from trauma, so I think that can have benefits, especially if you get away from the screen and start playing at clubs in your local area.

Before that, I played some open world MMORPGs like Star Trek Online, but I got tired of that after awhile. Maybe when I have time I will play that again, but I don’t have the time right now.

 

[Nomad]

It is difficult to give an exact answer, whether gaming will have a negative effect or a positive effect will be determined by a lot of factors. It depends on how many hours you are gaming, what kind of games you are playing, and whether you are also working on your job, going to school, etc.

 

[Heatman]

The way that I'm going to summarise it would be that too much doing of anything is bad and it's definitely going to have negative effects on your health mentally, physically and emotionally.

When you play video games in a way it's supposed to help you mentally and emotionally, it's going to do the job well but when you end up crossing the line of sanity, it's going to bite you back hard.

 

[Nomad]

Recently, I read a research paper on how gaming affected soldiers' performance. The study concluded that the soldiers who played shorter games had increased performance compared to those who were not playing games. The soldiers who played games had a better mark. In another study, it was found that people felt more relaxed who played games compared to those who did not play games. I think the answer is playing with moderation

 

[Heatman]

I have come across US military update on this context of gaming and it's impact in the lives of soldiers. The department of defense sanctioned it for miliary personnels to get into such shooting games because it helps to prepare them mentally for the war they are into.