Study finds video gaming during COVID-19 had little impact on mental health

A new meta-analysis published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications suggests that while people spent slightly more time playing video games during the COVID-19 pandemic, this increase was not meaningfully associated with changes in mental health. The findings are based on data from over tens of thousands of participants and indicate that concerns about gaming being a widespread risk to psychological well-being during lockdowns may have been overstated. At the same time, the results do not support the idea that more gaming led to mental health benefits either.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to sweeping lifestyle changes, including restrictions on in-person social interactions. Video gaming was often promoted as a safe form of entertainment that could help people stay connected and cope with stress. But some experts expressed concern that the rise in gaming might fuel problematic use and mental health problems.

Reports emerged of individuals playing for excessively long hours, raising questions about whether increased screen time was contributing to anxiety, depression, or other forms of psychological distress. Prior research offered mixed findings, with some studies suggesting that gaming could provide stress relief and emotional support, while others raised flags about overuse and potential harm.

“Before the COVID-19 pandemic, video gaming was often criticized. Most stakeholders highlighted potential harms, such as gaming addiction, aggression, and social isolation. As a researcher focused on the positive aspects of digital media, I was struck by how the discourse shifted during the pandemic,” said study author Łukasz Kaczmarek, a professor at Adam Mickiewicz University, where he heads the Social Psychology Center, the founder of the Psychophysiology Laboratory: Gaming & Streaming.

“Within weeks, video gaming was widely recommended as an at- home activity with possible benefits. The World Health Organization (WHO) promoted active video game use for exercise (#HealthyAtHome). The WHO’s #PlayApartTogether initiative disseminated ‘stay-at-home’ messages through popular games. Early findings published during the pandemic also suggested that gaming might support well-being. At the same time, other experts, including the WHO, expressed concern that increased playtime could do more harm than good. There were worrying reports of individuals escalating from 2 to 14 hours of daily play, thereby increasing the risk of gaming disorder.”

“Consequently, we saw a need for a broad synthesis of the findings documented in the scientific literature, so that we can evaluate the role of gaming during the COVID-19 pandemic. We focused on gaming time because it is a behavioral metric frequently addressed by parents, industry, and policymakers. Moreover, it is the most commonly reported measure across studies, enabling a more comprehensive and robust meta-analysis.”

The researchers reviewed studies published between March 2020 and December 2021 that reported on both gaming time and mental health indicators. They searched multiple academic databases and contacted dozens of researchers for unpublished data, ultimately including 17 studies that compared gaming time before and during the pandemic and 22 studies that analyzed the relationship between gaming time and mental health. In total, their analysis covered data from 37,778 participants.

The team focused on both positive mental health indicators—such as happiness, relaxation, and positive affect—and negative indicators, including stress, anxiety, depression, and loneliness. They also conducted moderator analyses to determine whether factors like geographic region or type of mental health measure influenced the results.

The results indicated a modest but statistically significant increase in gaming time during the COVID-19 pandemic (with an average effect size of d = 0.26). This suggests that people played more, but not dramatically more. The prediction intervals were wide, meaning some studies found notable increases while others did not.

“Average increases in gaming time were small,” Kaczmarek told PsyPost. “The scientific literature indicates a more modest change than some industry reports suggest. This could result from gaming platforms’ limited ability to distinguish accurately whether a game account is being used by the primary user or by their children. Thus, the narratives around video gaming time during the pandemic might have been overstated.”

“My intuition was that increases in gaming time would be substantial. However, this was not the case. One possibility is that there was greater competition for access to electronic devices when all family members were at home, some of whom were teleworking. Another is that individuals and families found more attractive ways of spending time together that competed successfully with gaming, such as cooking or gardening. There may be many alternative explanations.”

When the researchers examined the link between gaming time and mental health, they found no significant association. The overall correlation was r = −0.03, which is close to zero. In other words, people who played more games during the pandemic were not significantly more likely to experience better or worse mental health than those who played less.

Even when broken down into positive and negative mental health indicators, the differences remained negligible. The researchers also tested for several potential moderators, including participant age, region, type of mental health measure, and data collection timing. None of these significantly altered the core finding: gaming time had no meaningful association with well-being or distress.

“There is no clear evidence that time spent gaming, by itself, either helped or harmed mental health during the pandemic,” Kaczmarek explained. “On average, gaming time was not associated with negative indicators (e.g., depression, anxiety) or positive indicators (e.g., positive affect, happiness). At both high and low levels of mental health, some individuals played a lot and others played very little. This suggests that gaming time alone is unlikely to be the primary factor associated with mental health. Other parameters may matter more. For example, several studies point not to time but timing – when people play, so that sleep patterns remain intact.”

There were a few exceptions. For instance, people in Asia showed a slightly stronger negative association between gaming time and well-being, and gaming time was more weakly linked to measures of psychological distress than to measures of positive well-being. But even these effects were small and likely of limited practical significance.

The authors suggest that much of the concern around gaming during the pandemic may have been based on anecdotes or extreme cases rather than representative trends. Similarly, the belief that gaming broadly improved well-being may stem from subjective impressions rather than consistent data.

“There were so many striking reports showing evidence of the positive impact of games on mental health during the pandemic that I was surprised to see no association in the aggregated data,” Kaczmarek said. “Perhaps mass media selectively showed positive evidence more often.”

There are limitations to note. Most of the included studies relied on self-reported gaming time and mental health, which can be influenced by memory biases and social desirability. The analysis also focused on average changes, which may obscure meaningful shifts in specific subgroups. For example, people who were already struggling with mental health issues before the pandemic may have been more affected by changes in gaming behavior than others.

In addition, the researchers could not account for people who began gaming for the first time during the pandemic. Games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Among Us surged in popularity and attracted many new players. These individuals may have had different experiences than regular gamers, but the data did not separate them out.

Future research could explore not just how much people play, but why and how they play. Measuring motivation, context, and quality of gaming experiences may provide a fuller picture of gaming’s role in mental health. The researchers also advocate for more longitudinal studies and for the inclusion of both positive and negative mental health measures in future work.

“We hope this publication will be a call to action for many researchers studying video gaming and mental health,” Kaczmarek said. “We observed recurring gaps in research designs. There is a need for more comprehensive research programs on gaming and mental health during pandemics or lockdowns. For instance, gaming time and timing should be measured in relation to mental health.”

“Moreover, researchers concerned with negative mental health metrics could also control for positive metrics as part of a standardized approach, and vice versa. This is important because positive and negative metrics of mental health are not redundant. Both are informative and are influenced differently by life opportunities and challenges. Such programs should start as soon as possible and be maintained between crises so that baseline data are available when future events occur. Finally, as new empirical data become available, we hope to have even more material for further analyses that will revise the outcomes or increase confidence in them, and provide new insights.

“I previously mentioned that many individuals overestimate the risks of video gaming,” Kaczmarek added. “Paradoxically, this increased alertness may be a desirable state even if the vast majority of the population, in fact, benefits from video gaming. Most likely, this motivates individuals to be more observant regarding the development of negative symptomatology and to adjust their gaming behavior so that it fosters their mental health. I hope our findings will encourage readers to be more observant of their gaming activity and mental health and to game more thoughtfully, rather than taking these issues lightly.”

The study, “Video game play and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic: a meta-analysis of global findings,” was authored by Łukasz D. Kaczmarek, Patrycja Chwiłkowska, Maciej Behnke, and Dariusz Drążkowski.