Video games have long been seen as harmful to young people, but new evidence suggests that balanced gaming may be beneficial, according to Łukasz Kaczmarek, a psychology professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, western Poland.
“People who play in a balanced way have better mental health than people who do not play at all,” Kaczmarek said in an interview.
He added that the stereotypical gamer as an isolated, aggressive teenager does not match current data.
The average gamer is about 35, women and men play in similar numbers, and in developed countries more people play than do not.
Kaczmarek said studies show the link between violent games and aggression is statistically detectable yet negligible in everyday life. Patterns children observe between parents and in caregiving relationships matter far more for aggressive behavior, he said.
Games can also shape cooperative and helpful behavior, known as prosocial behavior, and the positive effect of prosocial games is stronger than the negative effect of aggressive titles.
Kaczmarek said gaming disorders affect about 2–3 percent of the population, with lower rates reported outside Asia, especially among women. Public perception, he noted, is far off: in a 2025 survey of a representative German sample, respondents guessed that roughly a third of gamers were addicted.
Recent large studies back the more balanced picture. An Italian study of 89,000 children and adolescents found that 52 percent played functionally, with better mental-health indicators than peers who did not play, including lower stress and depression.
About 12 percent hovered near problematic use, and around 3 percent showed clinical addiction symptoms.
A British study of 471,000 adults aged 40–69 reported that frequent players had a lower risk of dementia, better memory and reaction times, higher fluid intelligence, and even more gray matter in the hippocampus.
Kaczmarek’s own team reported that the amount of time people spent gaming during the pandemic did not track with their mental health. He said gaming appears to stimulate the brain precisely because it is interactive, keeping sensory and executive systems engaged.
He advised players and parents to focus on context and content: choose games that promote cooperation and intellectual challenge, avoid gambling-style mechanics, pick reasonable times to play and avoid late-night sessions, play with friends while steering clear of abusive players, and consider games that require physical activity, such as location-based titles.
He said people should watch how gaming affects their well-being and seek a psychologist’s help if problems emerge.
Kaczmarek is head of the Department of Social Psychology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, where he founded the Psychophysiology Laboratory: Gaming & Streaming. He is editor-in-chief of the international Journal of Happiness Studies.
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Source: naukawpolsce.pl