Video games tend to get a bad rap.
They’ve been blamed for countless violent crimes, including the 1999 Columbine high school massacre, and video game addiction was listed as an official medical condition by the World Health Organization in the latest revision of the International Classification of Diseases. Concerns about video games turning children into either violent criminals or antisocial outcasts permeate our pop culture now more than ever, but researchers have studied video game addiction and its negative health effects since the 1980s. What does the science say? Is playing video games actually bad for you?
The short answer: Not only is playing video games not inherently bad for you, but there are many mental health benefits that can come from gaming. “The vast majority of the research around video games is on the negative impact,” says Isabela Granic, a psychologist at McMaster University in Canada and director of ...
