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The Benefits of Online Gaming: What the Research Actually Shows

Video games can help with stress, friendships and some thinking skills, but the effects are smaller and more mixed than headlines suggest. A balanced look at the evidence.

For years, the public conversation about video games swung between two extremes: games rot your brain, or games make you smarter. The research of the last decade lands somewhere more interesting. Gaming has real benefits for many people, a few of them well supported, and some risks for a minority. Here’s what the evidence says.

Social connection

Online games are, for many players, a place to spend time with friends. Co-operative and team games involve constant communication and coordination, and voice chat turns a match into a social evening. During the pandemic lockdowns this mattered a great deal; surveys found many players used games specifically to stay in touch.

The quality of those interactions matters. Players who game with people they know, or in friendly communities, tend to report the most benefit. Toxic lobbies and harassment, which are still common, can do the opposite.

Stress relief and wellbeing

Many people play to unwind, and short sessions of an enjoyable game can genuinely lift mood. The larger question, whether gaming affects overall wellbeing, is harder.

A widely cited 2020 study from the Oxford Internet Institute used actual play data from two games, rather than self-reports, and found a small positive link between time spent playing and wellbeing. A larger follow-up in 2022, tracking nearly 39,000 players across seven games, found that the amount of play had practically no effect on wellbeing either way. What mattered more was why people played: those who felt they played because they wanted to tended to be better off than those who felt compelled to.

Thinking skills

Action games have the most research behind them. Laboratory studies, many led by cognitive scientist Daphne Bavelier, have found that players of fast-paced action games often outperform non-players on tasks involving visual attention and tracking several moving objects. Some training studies suggest these skills can improve with practice.

The caveats are important. Effects are typically modest, they show up most clearly on lab tasks similar to the games themselves, and there’s no good evidence that “brain training” games make people generally smarter.

Strategy and puzzle games exercise planning and problem solving in the moment, but evidence that this carries over to school or work performance is limited.

Coordination

Games that demand precise, rapid input can sharpen hand-eye coordination. Studies of surgeons and surgical trainees have found that those with more video game experience sometimes perform better in simulated keyhole surgery tasks, although that research is mostly small-scale.

Physical activity

Most gaming is sedentary. The exceptions, such as motion-controlled and virtual reality games, can provide light to moderate exercise, which may be a useful supplement for people who wouldn’t otherwise be active. They aren’t a replacement for regular exercise.

The risks worth knowing about

For a small minority, gaming becomes a problem. The World Health Organization added “gaming disorder” to its classification of diseases in 2019, defined by loss of control over gaming, giving it priority over other activities, and continuing despite harm. Estimates of how many players are affected vary, but most studies put it in the low single-digit percentages.

Other things to watch for:

  • Sleep: late-night sessions are one of the clearest ways gaming harms wellbeing.
  • Spending: loot boxes and other chance-based purchases have drawn regulatory scrutiny in several countries because of their resemblance to gambling.
  • Displacement: problems usually come from what gaming crowds out, like sleep, exercise, work or relationships, rather than gaming itself.

The balanced view

For most people, online gaming is a healthy hobby with modest benefits for mood, social life and some specific skills. Those benefits are strongest when play is something you choose, done with people you like, and kept in balance with sleep and everything else in your life.

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