Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to Pixel Parenting, the podcast where we blend science, research and real life parenting to help you raise kids in a world full of screens. This is part two of our special conversation on video games and mental health. If you missed part one, we explored how video game research is actually conducted, what kind of data is used, how to tell if a study is trustworthy, and why screen time alone isn't a meaningful measure of well being.
Today, we dive into what the research reveals with we're joined once again by Dr. Nick Ballou, a postdoctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute. Dr. Ballou studies how games affect mental health. Dr. Ballou walks us through 13 proposed ways video games might impact mental health. Some positive, some negative, and many that depend on context. We'll talk about emotional regulation, social connection, displacement, and even how games can support identity development.
And we'll break down common myths like whether violent games lead to violent behavior and what addiction really means. From a research perspective, whether you're feeling unsure or just curious, this episode is packed with insights and practical takeaways for navigating gaming in your home. So let's get into it.
Thank you, Dr. Ballou, for being here again.
You wrote a research paper that was published just yesterday. Yep, congratulations on that. And you talk about 13 different ways games might impact mental health. Can you talk about on the paper and what inspires you and your co authors to map this out and how did you do it?
[00:01:36] Speaker B: So we saw in the scientific evidence that people talked a lot about mechanisms essentially like what is it specifically about games that we think is impacting people? Is it something to do with a feature like loot boxes, a random monetized element that's a really common one that people think might be harmful because it's conceptually similar to gambling in some ways.
We see people talking about gaming disorder, sort of a compulsive or obsessive relationship with games. We see people talking about the positives, about the social connections that they develop in games. But what we didn't see is those different ideas formalized, put into the language of a particular model that we can test and try to break in half and see where does it work, where does it doesn't work and then improve on it.
So we had a lot of different people that were essentially talking next to each other instead of talking to each other. And with how much work there is being done in this area, if we can sort of coalesce, if we can sort of identify, here are the main 10, 15, 20, 50, it doesn't even matter ideas Ways that we think games are impacting people and work iteratively to improve upon each of those. We can make so much more progress than we're currently doing.
So our goal was simply to take a slice of the research evidence. We could not take all of it. There are thousands of papers on this topic. So we relied on our own subjective expertise of the literature to say here are the topics that we see most frequently represented. If it's maybe it's related to stress relief, maybe it's related to gaming displacing other time that people would be spending on something potentially more psychosocially beneficial like reading or spending time with, with friends or something like that.
These are the ideas that we see discussed most frequently. Now let's try to put that language of a collaborative model that we can all work together to improve upon and get to the truth more effectively. That's what we tried to do.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: Yes, that's fascinating. So why is it so hard to make clear cut rules around video games and mental health? Behavior consequence Behavior consequence.
Why is it so hard?
[00:03:54] Speaker B: So in the paper we discuss the idea that the effects of games are determined by three different, different interrelating things. It's affected by the context. Where is the gaming happening? With whom the gaming is happening? Is it sitting on the couch next to your brother or is it with strangers in another country when it's happening? There might be a difference between playing games in the morning versus on the evening or on the weekends.
So the context matters a lot. The player themselves matters a lot. It goes what you, the motivations that you go into a game with, your perspective, your skills and ability within the game. Those have a really important effect on whether you then finish playing with a sense that you've done something that you're happy with and proud of and feel good about versus something that might leave you feeling a little bit worse or that's crowding out other, other things, other important areas of your life. And of course the game itself matters. What game mode are you playing? What genre is it in? What is the community like in that game? How tolerant are they of different players or of players like you?
How is it monetized? Those kinds of things matter a lot as well. So we have these three intersecting things. The context, the player and the game.
And for any given sort of triangle, if we have, if we know all three of those things, I think we can start to say with some confidence what effects we might be likely to see what versions of that triangle are better for people or worse for people. But we off we very rarely have the whole triangle.
We are oftentimes looking at just one of those three things, looking at just the time when it happens, or just the particular player or just the game, without consideration of who's playing it and trying to come up with rules based on that.
And I think if we try to make a rule that only takes one point of the triangle, it's sort of destined to fail, which is tough because it means that the rules that we eventually want to make are going to be complicated. They're going to have these contingencies and sort of layers to them. So in this situation, here's a better thing for you to do. In this situation, here's a slightly less good thing for you to do.
I hope we can get there. I think that's still feasible, but it is a lot harder than it's been sort of treated to date.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: Yes, that's actually very interesting and sounds very complex.
Dig into the 13 effects on your paper. Can you mention them for the audience? And then we can maybe dig into the ones that might be more interesting for parents.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: Yes, sounds good.
So the 13 that we came up with, we grouped them into three categories. There are some mechanisms, some effects that go both directions or sort of maybe either direction. We talk about stress relief as something that people frequently discuss turning to games to relieve the stresses of day to day life. But we know that people can become over reliant so that can go end up going both ways. We talk about the these basic psychological needs for autonomy, a sense of agency, for confidence, to feel mastery and a sense of belonging in your community. Those are called basic psychological needs. We know that games are really good at satisfying those a lot of the time, but that at the same time they can actively frustrate them. They can impede those very same needs by making people do things they don't want to do, make them feel bad.
We have basic needs, we have social relationships. Games can help you build friends, but they can also make you feel lonely and isolated when you're targeted by people.
And we have what we call passion versus obsession. That gaming can be a hobby in your life that you really feel is something that you are passionate about, that gives color and energy to your life. It can also be something that you feel a sense of obsession or compulsion towards and that therefore interferes with other things. So there's this passion versus obsession idea that can go in both directions.
We then had five mechanisms, five effects that are more positive in nature.
There are a lot of exercise games where people can use games As a way of motivating physical activity in a way that can be really beneficial for people. Things like Pokemon Go. But there are many more.
Games can be a tool for identity development. They allow people to experiment with parts of themselves that they're maybe not comfortable exploring in real life. To be someone else for a time and see how that feels to try on. What is it like to be someone who's more aggressive? What is it like to be someone who's a caretaker? What is it like to be someone of another gender? And those going through those ideas can be really powerful for making people feel a sense of coherence with who they are.
Games can be good for developing executive function. Certain kind of fast paced, more action games can improve visual reasoning and your ability to perform cognitive tasks.
Certain games have applied outcomes. So they are games that are designed explicitly for delivering therapy of some kind or for teaching for education, developing some particular skill or learning.
And games that are effectively designed with those ends and minds can be positive for people both on a practical level and on their broader mental health. We have this idea of eudaimonia, of meaning and appreciation. Games are really deep art form with, you know, intricate stories and feelings of connection to this world, to this character. If you've ever played a game like the Last of Us, I. I felt like Ellie was my daughter just as much as Joel felt like she was his.
Those could be really powerful experiences of connection and appreciation. And then we had four negative effects that we discussed. We talk about displacements. Time is finite. If you are doing one thing, you are by definition not doing other things. Some of those other things might be interchangeable. Gaming versus Netflix, probably a toss up for me. Gaming even better, but relatively on the same level. Gaming versus finishing your homework. Gaming versus seeing an old friend. Gaming versus hygiene or sleep. Those are potentially more problematic trade offs that someone might be making.
We talk about financial harms that some of these games have predatory mechanics that kind of are designed to compel players to spend more than they might otherwise want to. Or maybe that they realize in the case of children than they realize they're spending.
Can be hard to sort of with all the layers of virtual currencies versus real world currencies, it can be hard to know what is the value of the thing that I'm buying and how much am I paying for it. And by using various techniques they can, yeah, pressure people to spend in ways that are unhealthy.
Then we have gaming disorder, what I sometimes call dysregulated gaming. An inability to manage your behavior in an active way to sort of recognize when what you're doing is working for you, when it's not working for you, and letting that then spiral out of control.
And finally we talk a little bit about sexualization and misogyny. There are still cases of games having sort of a problematic depiction of women in particular and transmitting ideas that can be harmful both on sort of the shame body, bodily shame level for women and girls and potentially engendering a bit of misogyny in boys and men.
And that's the, that's the full list.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you for doing it in a nutshell. And I think the audience is going to appreciate it because it's very interesting and putting it in such a complete way, you know, like the triangle that you mentioned, plus taking into account all these things, it really shows how complex the video game research is and how understanding the impact of video games is super complex.
So I think for the audience, could you talk more about the emotional regulation, social connection and the displacement of time? I think that's something that parents are very worried about. And what have you found and you know, the findings on those areas?
[00:11:51] Speaker B: Yeah, starting with sort of emotion regulation. A mood. Mood management is a term that you often see here because what we're really talking about is short term, often rebalancing. We actually find in a lot of cases games are beneficial as a mood enhancement. I'm feeling average, I play a game, I feel really good. That does happen.
But perhaps games are actually even better at. I'm going through life and then some stressor happens to me. I have a bad day at work, I had a bad day at school. Someone was not very kind to me. I've got received bad news about something that I was hoping for. And then games being used as an active way to rebalance one's mood. We see a lot of examples of that. Qualitatively, people discuss turning to games both for minor, relatively minor day to day struggles, feeling, you know, tired or unproductive or you know, just anything that might have you feeling less than 100, maybe if you're a little bit sick.
People discuss turning to games as a way to feel better for a moment and maybe that lingers with you afterwards and that scales all the way up into really profound instances of grief and loss. People talk about playing games to recover or to provide a sense of escape temporarily from things like the loss of a loved one, things like a really hard medical diagnosis that they may have recently received and job loss and unemployment issues.
Games can be a really powerful tool for that kind of active rebalancing. And I'll add just a little bit of context to that. I think one of the interesting things that we found in some of our qualitative work is, is seeing that it can go both ways. We see examples of people who are in a sort of depressed or a low energy state, sometimes turning to a game that is a little bit more high energy or exciting to rebalance them in that way. They're not feeling low energy and they want to feel a little bit higher energy. They turn to a game that's able to provide that for them.
And we have the exact opposite. We have people who are feeling sort of stressed or anxious or angry even, who are in a very high energy state that might then turn to a relaxing, cozy game, something like unpacking or whatever it is, to then rebalance themselves to a, a more moderate normal energy state in that way. So we see both in the sort of the positive negative axis and on the low energy, high energy axis, we see people using games to get themselves to a kind of a healthy middle that they feel good about.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: So what you're saying is that it can actually be good for regulation, but it can also go the other way, right?
[00:14:32] Speaker B: Absolutely, yes. Rises and thank you for prompting me. The problem arises when then people use games as the only resource for that. Emotion regulation.
Emotion regulation is, is a toolkit. It's something that we need a lot of resources to be able to deal with because we do it all the time and sometimes in really difficult situations.
So in an ideal situation, someone has a lot of things that they can turn to. They can turn to meditation, they can turn to exercise or physical activity or a sport. They can turn to their friends and their family. They can turn to reading or other hobbies, a creative pursuit, art, music, whatever, and games.
And depending on what they need in that moment and which of those options is going to serve them best, then they can pursue that and feel like they have things in balance. The issue is when people over rely on games as the only way of counteracting a really difficult mood, when they're sort of constantly escaping two games to avoid their real world problems, maybe sometimes even worsening those very same real world problems by virtue of, you know, not spending the time or the mental energy in figuring out how to improve them.
And then they can both kind of crowd out other things. Games can become too prominent, they can be the only tool in the toolkit and, and they can lose their effectiveness after a while that the, the benefits, the Good feelings that come from playing games don't always last as long the next time or kind of get you to where you want to be mood wise as effectively as they used to.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
What comes to mind is that if you start using video games as a way of coping, you may be able to, to control it or able to balance it with other activities. But then what do you think about how video games are designed? Like you get all these dopamine boosts and you know, like they're hard to quit. And if you're depressed and you keep procrastinating with video games, the nature of the video game can actually make you go the wrong way. Right. Doing sports is never going to give you that. You're not going to be all the time doing sports because, you know, it's not that easy. Right. Does it make sense what I'm saying?
[00:16:43] Speaker B: Absolutely, yeah. I think broadly you're absolutely correct. There are examples of people taking almost every behavior to excess. There are compulsive pathological exercisers. There are compulsive pathological eaters. Their compulsive pathological sex can be compulsive and pathological. I agree with you that games are particularly good at exploiting people in that vulnerable state. People who are not in a position to reflect on their own behavior, whether by virtue of sort of their development and the, the tools that they have at that point or because the situation is just really difficult and they're kind of depleted and less able to monitor themselves to know, to do the introspection and know when is something good for me and when is it not. A lot of people are in that, in that position.
It's a really difficult. Even I'm in that position sometimes it's really difficult thing to train. And there are games that can take advantage of that better than others, perhaps. And I think you're right that the games with the sort of the endless checklist of tasks, particularly when there's a sense of falling behind, when there's a sense that if I'm not doing this, all of my peers or the other, the rest of this community is proceeding without me. They're leaving me behind in terms of skill, in terms of equipment and how powerful your character is, that can absolutely keep people trapped beyond that initial potentially adaptive purpose for coping or regulation that it might have initially been serving.
[00:18:08] Speaker A: Yeah. And actually that falls back into the recommendation you were giving in the prior episode, which is communication with kids. You build those awareness skills by talking to them and asking them what did you like? What didn't you like that's a skill that you can actually build because as you said, as adults, we struggle to control it.
I didn't grow up building that awareness was in my 20s when first time I got really, really addicted to a video game. And so it got me my surprise. But if, if parents can start building that awareness on their children early on, then video games can actually become. And this is a question, a tool for emotional regulation, correct?
[00:18:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. That's the, that's the utopian world that I. That I hope to live in someday where that's the, that's the educational standards from parents from schools can be involved in this kind of education as well in terms of media literacy, introspection. Because that is, we're not likely to live in a world where games are going to be so thoroughly regulated that these types of opportunities for exploiting someone in a vulnerable situation don't exist. I don't think that's ever going to happen. And in fact, I maybe shouldn't. Because the same things that can make someone in a vulnerable position play to excess or are often the exact same things that make someone in a healthy position have the most fun they've ever had to really feel like they're advancing and immersed in this world.
So fun is good in most contexts. It can be sort of problematic in others. So I don't think we're going to regulate fun, but we can educate people on when fun is good and when it's not. And I will also say, I think there's hope for all of us if you didn't learn this as a kid.
I'll give you a tip that I think is really useful. You can start filling out a little game diary. It can be short. Just say what game you played, when you started, when you finished, and either something like, why did you pick this particular game up in the first place? Or how you felt when you were playing it, or how you felt when you were done playing with. Or even something like, what would you have done instead had you not played this game? What do you think the alternative activity for you might have been? And thinking about why is it that I picked this particular game? That's an exercise that all of us can do across the lifespan and I think that almost everyone would benefit from it.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: Yes, I 100% agree. And I actually have a template of the Journey in Pixel Pipeline.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Full circle, perfect.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: Great. So let's jump into the social connections impact on video games.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. This is the most commonly cited effect of games if you talk to players and you ask them, what is it that you like about games? Why do you play them? You will mostly hear, I want to feel connected to my friends.
It's a good way to meet people. It's a good way to hang out with people. We did a study during COVID that had a really interesting finding related to games as a social lubricant. So we were finding that we can all relate to opening up a zoom call with your friends in May 2020 and not really knowing what to say. Like having sort of this stilted, awkward conversation where everyone's saying, well, how's lockdown where you are pretty bad? How's lockdown where you are also pretty bad? And not being with other people, but not really feeling like you're connecting to them. And what a lot of people did in our study is they told us that they played games as a way to make those interactions more natural, to give you something that you can focus on together with the people that you're talking to and therefore sort of get more out of the time that you're spending with your friends or with your family than you would in another situation. So games can sort of create an environment where people can feel at ease, feel comfortable, feel like they're, you know, cooperating or competing in a way that really benefits that. That social need that we all have.
Of course, that is one of the great gifts of gaming, and it is one of the reasons that I often play cooperative games when I have the opportunity. Once you extend that, once you open up that invitation to the wider world, you will find a host of lovely people who are all committed to creating really wonderful gaming communities. I often look at speedrunning as an area where there's just so much positivity, so many people working together with strangers to overcome extremely difficult tasks, to break games and complete them as fast as possible. I think that's such a fascinating hobby. But as soon as you're exposed to strangers, there are also opportunities for toxicity. There are opportunities for harassment. There are opportunities for people with marginalized identities to be targeted.
Gaming is. It's better now. Something about half the people who play games are women at this point. Although men tend to play more games, men and boys tend to play games longer. But people who just play games at all, it's basically an even gender split.
Nonetheless, it is still a little bit harder, maybe a lot harder to be a girl or a woman in gaming spaces than it is to be a boy or a man.
So there are lots of opportunities. Essentially, you will at some point be exposed to negative social interactions of someone harassing you or griefing you or trolling you.
It unfortunately remains effectively the norm in many multiplayer spaces and it's on us to figure out how to detect and remove it as quickly as possible and to give people the tools to not have that affect them to minimize the effect of those interactions on their experience of playing games.
[00:23:44] Speaker A: Yes, and it reminds me of. It's similar to the social media interactions, right? So the, the kind of advice or education that parents have to provide kids on social media translates into the social part on video games when you're playing online with strangers. So it's basically the same concept. So what about displacement? When you're playing video games, you're not doing something else. What are your findings on that?
[00:24:14] Speaker B: So we are displaying, just about to publish the first paper where we really get to look at this in depth, where we're looking at behavioral data combined with people telling us what they think they would have done instead. So unfortunately, I don't have the juiciest findings for you yet.
Broadly, what I can tell you is that it relates to what we call core life domains. Whether gaming is displacing a core life domain, which we include work and school performance, we include social relationships and social health, we include attention and cognition, we include feeling like you're able to focus on things as something that gaming can get in the way of. And we include health and hygiene.
And if gaming is interfering with any of those things, health, hygiene and exercise, actually including physical health at large, if gaming is interfering with those things, if you're playing games so much that any of those four areas is not being well taken care of, if you're letting relationships start to fall apart, if you're letting your work and school performance dip below an acceptable standard, if you're letting your sleep take a hit repeatedly, those.
That's when we start to think of that trade off as inherently problematic. And when it's not, when it's trade offs with typically other leisure or media activities. If you're trading, if you're making a trade off between games and drawing or games and watching something or games and producing content of your own of some kind, I think those are the trade offs that we view as less inherently problematic.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes total sense. What's one of the more overlooked or misunderstood effects of video games? Because we're not. I wish we could go over the 13th, but we don't have the time.
[00:26:02] Speaker B: My favorite one, the one that I'm most interested in exploring in the future. And I think the one that's also potentially hardest to explore is this identity question. I don't think people often realize how important games can be to a lot of people in sort of understanding who they are. People who say I am someone who plays games, I'm someone who plays these kinds of games, I'm someone who interacts with other people who play games.
That for a ton of people is maybe the dominant part of how they see themselves. You can go, you can find, you know, YouTube essayists that talk about their, you know, their experience with games, how they dissect them and understand what they're doing to me, what they're doing to the community. People who really analyze themselves and analyze games and immerse themselves in this world. That is I think such a powerful outcome for so many people that if you haven't experienced it or if it hasn't happened to someone close to you can be hard to wrap your head around. So I think that one definitely gets overlooked. And yeah, it's, we, we don't know yet how that compares to sort of other identities. So whether it's the case that gaming is. Does, to what extent does identifying as a gamer in some cases augment your experience of saying, identifying as a parent and sometimes it might interfere with identifying as a parent. Does it relate to identifying as a high achieving worker or does it interfere with feeling like a high achieving worker? So these different labels that we put on ourselves, we don't yet have a good sense of how gaming fits into those and how we can sort of ensure that people have a healthy number of hats that they can take on and off and that they feel good about and that they can use to understand who they are. But certainly we know that there are really, there can be really positive outcomes. Perhaps the most powerful outcomes that ever happen in games research happen in this area. And I hope we can untangle that over the next couple years.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: That's interesting. And so it's identity building not just like in the I identify as a gamer, but also like the character that I play, how I play. Like if you're playing a role playing game, I usually play the mage role. And you learn about yourself and why you choose what you choose in the game. And I always choose the same types of characters and my husband chooses the same types of characters. And yes, and it's, it's interesting their.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: Example just because I'm aware that sometimes it's real. This stuff comes across as really abstract, but I, as many kids born in the mid-90s did played a lot of World of Warcraft as a child and an early teenager and I was pretty exclusively a healer class. And that was something I, in a, you know, relatively normal small town, early 2000s, like there were not a lot of opportunities for men and boys to feel, to be gentle, to feel like they were caretakers in that way. But I think at that time I really valued feeling like I was needed, feeling like I was protecting the other players around me. That was such a valuable thing to try out, to see how does it feel to take care of these other people and that it can be, that it can be gender, it can be sexuality. There are a lot of ways that games can help us try on different things that we don't often get a safe space to try on in the real world.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. And it doesn't really mean that you want to be that identity, but just that you want to experience it and it gives you a door, an opportunity to experience it. Right. So anyway, yeah, and I used to play World of Warcraft a lot. That's when I discovered gaming addiction. Well, yeah, anyway, that's another topic. What are the top three myths you hear about gaming and mental health?
[00:29:49] Speaker B: The first one is unfortunately still that violent video games produce aggressive behavior that is thoroughly debunked by high quality research. There may in some cases be really short term nuanced effects of sort of sensitivity to violence and things like that. There is absolutely no evidence that games are systematically producing a generation of violent children. It has yet to happen. Crime rates continue to decrease. I am pretty sick of debating that topic. But it still continues to show up in the literature, unfortunately. So I think that's the biggest one.
I think I hinted at it before when I say it aloud. People often don't think like they don't. They recognize that it's kind of an absurd premise that the quantity of play is a primary factor in the effects of games. They sort of know that of course it depends on what they're playing and who's playing and how they're playing it. But we still treat it a lot of the time like that is the solution. We still look for time restrictions as sort of our primary way of monitoring, regulating what people are doing and say, oh yeah, well if they only play two hours a day, then it, it can't be that bad. And in the scientific literature that's often the, the variable that is used to conduct these, these analyses, to find the results. So I think that even if no one believes it out loud is still sort of a.
A community myth that, that lives on.
I. I can give you one more. Many parents will have heard of the Internet gaming disorder as conceptualized in this diagnostic manual from American Psychological Association. This version of problematic gaming is really prominent. You'll see a lot of sort of screening questionnaires like, are you. Do you have a problematic relationship with games? Fill out this questionnaire.
I think it is a bit of a myth that that is the best or the only way of thinking about problematic gaming. And in fact, in many cases, it's actively the wrong one. There are some symptoms on this list. One of them is, do you think about games when you're not playing them? Something they call preoccupation. Are you preoccupied with games when you're not playing them? I'm preoccupied with games all the time. And frankly, I like daydreaming about games that I have been enjoying and that I look forward to playing when my workday is done. I think that's a positive thing. So there are certain symptoms in this Internet gaming disorder checklists that are at worst neutral and at best, sometimes actually a good thing. And so I hope we continue to kind of go around in circles about how to reframe the. The idea of gaming disorder as a verifiable mental health condition. But even setting that aside, I hope we can at least think more carefully about what are the meaningful indicators of someone who's having a problem here. And some of those, some of the ones like preoccupation or escapism are not on that list. Escapism is also something that we all seek in lots of areas of life in many ways, and in many, a lot of the time, that's a good thing. Having a temporary reprieve from difficult situations is good. And so I would encourage people to be just a little bit skeptical about Internet gaming disorder specifically, and whether that's the right way to think about a healthy or an unhealthy relationship with games.
[00:33:07] Speaker A: That's. That's very interesting. Yes. And then a lot of parents, I hear a lot the, oh, my kids are addicted. They use the word addicted to video games. But the fact that a child is playing a lot video games going back to the time limit. Right. Doesn't really mean that they have a condition or, you know, like they fall into this disorder. And what you just said, actually, it makes it perfectly clear that what is on that list might not be.
And now for accurate. How can parents think about this? Like, okay, if it's not time, then how do I do it? Right.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: I think the Three ones, the three things that I would look out for. And these are all things that you have to ask your child. This is, of course, harder. The younger they are, the harder it is to get meaningful answers out of them. But it's, why are you playing this particular game?
What do you want out of it? Sorry, that's the same question, like, why are you choosing this game? Maybe even why are you choosing this game at this time?
How do you feel during and after you're done playing it? So trying to check in with them, ideally, even over the course of gaming sometimes, but certainly at the end, how did that make you feel? What did you enjoy about that experience? What did you not enjoy about that experience?
And then again, what would you have done instead?
Can we think a little bit about the other options?
What else do you like that can make you feel similarly or, you know, positively in a different way to games? What is it about Legos that's different about, than. Than gaming? What do I get out of these two things that I might want at a particular time? And I think you can.
Yeah, some of these things you can monitor a little bit.
Others are certainly easier once the child is old enough to have a conversation with you about them.
But those are what I would look for as indicators of a healthy relationship with games.
[00:35:02] Speaker A: Okay, that's super practical and I love it. Can I put it in a document?
[00:35:06] Speaker B: Of course. Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:35:07] Speaker A: Perfect. And so then when should a parent worry and when can they relax a little? When. When should they really worry about a potential actual addiction?
[00:35:17] Speaker B: They should worry when they.
When they see other important areas, other important responsibilities falling away. When they see that gaming is the only leisure activity that they're involved with. When they are no longer being creative or playing, engaging in physical activity, when gaming becomes the dominant or the only activity in their lives. I think that includes even. I think that's. That's the really big one. So that is part of the what would they be doing instead? Thing. And again, that's the kind of thing that you can monitor in terms of, of course, their bedtime and sleep quality, not just sleep quantity, but sleep quality in terms of their work and school, their school performance, in terms of their social relationships. Are they maintaining their social relationships? You'll find in some cases, games are helping them build social connections. Their friend group is expanding because these social networks in games are so dense, so, so rich, that because they're playing games with these friends, they. They're able to develop relationships with other kids in their school or in their peer community.
Those are good signs. If you find that they are then slowly those social relationships are atrophying. They're kind of fading away because gaming is at the forefront.
That's a point to be worried and concerned and I think there is have. I'm not a parent at this time so it's hard for. I don't have the first hand knowledge of how this feels and I can only imagine how difficult it is. But the. The experiences of sort of immediate anger or really visceral negative emotional reactions when the gaming is taken away or when the gaming has to end for some reason, whether it's enforced by the parent or by the situation.
That is I think something to be worried about. If they, if they really aren't able to emotionally handle the idea of not playing games even temporarily, that is a warning sign to maybe pause and figure out what does a version of gaming look like that actually can fit into your life and not take it over.
[00:37:31] Speaker A: Yes, that's very insightful and really, really practical. I love it. So I think we're getting towards the end of the episode. So what gives you hope when it comes to family and games?
[00:37:43] Speaker B: I think two things give me hope. The first is that we are now at the point of having kids who are gamers now be parents.
So we are having really the first, first ish, first and a half generation of kids who are growing up in households where parents really do understand games, where it's not this sort of foreign.
What are the youth up to?
That it was for me and my parents for example that means that there's more opportunities for co play. There are lots of parents actively playing with their children. I think that's such a fantastic way to create a bond and to show interest in the thing that your child naturally already finds exciting and for you to keep up to date with how the video game landscape is changing and how it differs from what it was like when you were a kid. Or alternatively to show your child what gaming was like in your youth. There are lots of retro and older games that are being re released and made available.
We did a paper that's now under review on Nintendo retro gaming. Nintendo has a particularly wide library of classic consoles and classic games that you can play.
And we looked a little bit about the periods of life that people were revisiting. People tended to revisit about 10 years old was the most common age that people were returning to when they were playing games from their youth. And I think that's what a cool thing to do to. To show the games that you played when you were 10 with your 10 year olds. I think that's that. So that gives me hope that we're having, we're getting more literate parents and more a situation where kind of both parties can really benefit from using this medium together.
And I'm also encouraged by the improvements in the research landscape. I think we are, we're turning a corner. It's been a slow road to get here but the technical infrastructure is finally getting to the point where we really can look at people's gaming in sufficient detail to figure out really when it's working for them and when it's not and start to give more practical advice. For a long time we've been saying sort of common sense things. I think a lot of the things I've said in this interview are in large part common sense and you probably didn't need a researcher to tell you them. And I hope that we will soon be in a position where we can give really evidence based concrete guidelines for parents, for policymakers, for developers using this kind of nuanced longitudinal data that we're getting access to so that being in place gives me hope for the next, I don't know, three to ten years or something.
[00:40:20] Speaker A: I share that hope with you and the, and the actually talking about the retro games, I actually find that they are much more resilience building or emotional regulation building because when you died in Mario you had three lives. I mean you could get more but like you died and you would start over like just like in modern gaming, starting all over again just because you died. Really, you're making me do this all over again? Yeah. So that's a lot of resilience building.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: 100%. They're so punishing.
[00:40:52] Speaker A: Can you tell parents where they can find your work? Work if you want to dig deeper, deeper or if they want to participate in your research, Absolutely.
[00:41:01] Speaker B: The easiest place is probably my website nickballew.com there you'll find links to some of the papers that we've done. They're all. Everything that we write is open access so you will be able to get a copy of the paper. I know that can be quite dense and overwhelming so I'm also happy to answer questions via email. You'll find information on there and I will make a note to myself to highlight in some capacity the sign up lists that's also found on my website Linked Linked for my website. Here's how you can sign up to be notified when a study that might be suitable for you or your child is available. And I hope that there will be several of those coming this year and in years to come.
[00:41:38] Speaker A: So we're at the end of part two of our conversation with Dr. Nick Ballou. Thank you, Dr. Ballou for being here. It was fascinating. We covered a lot today from how video games can support emotional growth and social connection to how they might also displace other important activities or create financial pressures.
As Dr. Ballou reminded us, there's no one size fits all rule. The impact of games depends on why kids play, what they're playing, and the support they have around them.
So if there's one key takeaway, it's this. Context matters and engage curious parenting. Asking questions, staying connected, and helping kids reflect on their play can make all the difference.
Again, huge thank you to Dr. Ballou for sharing his work and insight with us. You can find links to his research and sign up to participate in future studies in the show notes. If you enjoyed this two part series, please share it with a friend, leave a review and follow Pixel Parenting for more episodes. Thank you for listening and as always, stay curious.
