The Role of Gaming on Mental Health During Lockdowns

It's been over six years since the COVID pandemic, and we (probably) all remember lockdowns, where more people played more hours of video games. At the same time, mental health dropped to a low, and loneliness skyrocketed. But was it all due to the lockdowns, or did video games have a say there too? Today's study looks at the relationship between time spent gaming, loneliness, and mental health during the lockdowns.

It's been over six years since the COVID pandemic, and we (probably) all remember the lockdowns that came with it. During lockdowns, the number of people and hours they played video games drastically increased. For instance, it was estimated that 3.2 billion people played video games in 2022.

With such a high number of players, governments and healthcare providers are keeping an eye out for potential negative effects of gaming on health. Frequent readers know that yes, there are negative impacts, but the relationship between gaming and health is complicated. For example, gaming addiction. However, low self-esteem, increased loneliness, and poor social function are precursors of a gaming addiction, rather than consequences. In contrast, other studies have shown that playing can have upsides on mental health and psychological well-being. To mention a few examples, positive emotions (e.g., happiness, excitement, and surprise), reduced negative emotions (e.g., stress and anxiety), and improved emotional stability. Many fellow gamers also know that firsthand, as studies have also shown, firing up a game may be a coping mechanism during stressful times or negative life events.

Circling back to the COVID-19 lockdowns: these can be considered stressful times, where many felt a negative impact on their mental health. One aspect regards loneliness, since a major part of human society wasn't able to socially connect in a physical, "normal" way. But there were video games...

"Consequently, it seems likely that individuals may use video gaming to socialise, reduce loneliness, improve mood, and feel a sense of achievement during particularly stressful situations." [1]

But was this low mental health only related to the lockdowns, or did video games play a role in it too, and what were the potential impacts on loneliness? The study we'll be looking at today takes a closer look at that with the aim to...

"... investigate this potential relationship using the three COVID-19 lockdowns across the U.K. as a model of stress to investigate the relationship between video gaming, loneliness, and mental health outcomes." [1]

🔒 Lockdown and Loneliness

After analyzing data from 220 UK gamers, the researchers found that:

1. During the first lockdown, people showed higher depression, stress, and anxiety scores compared to the weeks prior. This probably isn't super surprising, as it had such a tremendous impact on people from one day to another.
2. During the second lockdown, this didn't happen. Meaning, depression, stress, and anxiety didn't increase. This kind of makes sense too. People already had the experience of a first lockdown, so when the second one arrived, they were, more or less, mentally ready or resilient to the experience.
3. Similarly, as the number of hours people played video games drastically increased during the first lockdown, this wasn't the case during the second one. This is a bit of a tricky one. I would assume that, during the first lockdown, a) rules were much more strict, and b) people were more compliant with them. Meaning, during the time of the second lockdown, people had more freedom to do other stuff or just did by not following the rules as much.
4. "... all three lockdowns were characterized by greater loneliness scores compared to before lockdown." [1] No surprise here. It doesn't matter how strict the lockdown is or if it's the first or 100th one; humans will feel more lonely during such times.
5. There was no evidence of a relationship between loneliness and the amount people played video games. No relationship means neither positive nor negative. So, playing didn't increase the feeling of loneliness, nor did it reduce it. It seems that, during the lockdowns, video games weren't a strong enough factor to significantly reduce the loneliness people felt.
6. The same result was found for the relationship between the time spent gaming and mental health outcomes—there was none. Again, the impact of gaming on mental health wasn't strong enough during the lockdowns to be considered a significant factor.
7. "Finally, during all three lockdowns, loneliness was associated with poorer mental health." [1]

Thanks for reading, everyone. Go and get your social connections outside. ;-)

Christian 🙂

References

[1] Hodgetts et al., 2023