The COVID-19 pandemic was accompanied by periods of lockdown and physical distancing, which caused substantial shifts in lifestyle habits worldwide (Bailey et al., 2022). One domain that has drawn interest during this period was video gaming. As people found themselves confined to their homes, questions arose about how the change in circumstances might impact gaming habits and, in turn, players' mental health. Many concerns were raised about whether players would increase their gaming time and, in turn, decrease their well-being and increase adverse outcomes such as depression or anxiety (Xu et al., 2021). In contrast, some argued that increased gaming during a pandemic might be an effective strategy to facilitate mental health in a restrictive physical environment, e.g., by providing high-quality entertainment, stress relief, and social interaction opportunities with other players (Boldi et al., 2022; Giardina et al., 2021).
As countries transitioned into the post-pandemic period, it is essential to synthesize the generated knowledge about gaming time and players' mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic using meta-analytical methods. Thus, we aimed to scrutinize and integrate the available findings to understand to what extent players changed their gaming time during the COVID-19 pandemic relative to their pre-pandemic levels and whether the amount of time spent playing was related to their mental health, including well-being (e.g., positive affect) and ill-being (e.g., depression) metrics. This provides an empirical-based answer to whether the concerns of adverse (Maraz et al., 2021) or the hopes of protective gaming effects (Giardina et al., 2021) were justified.
This aim is essential because our conclusions might impact various stakeholders, such as players, their parents or partners, educators, and policymakers (European Commission, 2023). For instance, if the increases in gaming time were high and their impact on mental health was negative, more awareness should be raised regarding healthy gaming use during pandemics. In contrast, if the impact on mental health was positive, increased gaming might be advocated as a substantial and endorsed method of sustaining mental health during pandemics. Finally, if the increases were negligible or the impact on mental health neutral, the attention and effort might be redirected to areas other than gaming to optimize well-being and ill-being metrics during pandemics.
The COVID-19 pandemic and video gaming
Video gaming is a global phenomenon that has steadily grown over the last decades. It engages around 70% of the population in developed societies (Statista, 2022). Of the four billion people worldwide with access to gaming technology, approximately three billion play video games (Statista, 2022). This widespread involvement in gaming makes studying gaming relevant to the mental health of a large part of the population. Due to its popularity, any shifts in gaming patterns are likely to have a global impact. This might be particularly important during pandemics, which change daily habits, including work, education, and leisure.
The number of gamers grew before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. It grew by 34% from 2015 to 2023 and is expected to rise a further 7% in the next two years. The video game market generates $347 billion in annual revenue, making it the third-largest entertainment industry in the world (Statista, 2022). There was a 31% increase in consumer spending on video gaming during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, playtime declined by around 20% as the lockdowns ended, especially among hardcore players, suggesting that the pre-pandemic increases were boosted during the pandemic.
Moreover, during the COVID-19 pandemic, social games such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo, Japan) and Among Us (Innersloth, US) surged in popularity. For instance, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was used as a social environment for weddings, graduation ceremonies, political campaigning, and virtual protests (Wikipedia, 2023a). Furthermore, the success of Among Us, a social deception game, has been attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic. The game was released in 2018 and received little attention before the pandemic (Wikipedia, 2023b).
However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, there were some challenges for the gaming industry and the players. For instance, due to the breaks in supply chains, it was problematic for manufacturers to produce and distribute video game consoles and hardware. This might have restricted access to individuals who wanted to initiate or improve their gaming experience. Moreover, some developers had problems releasing new games due to the difficulty of working remotely on their games.
Gamers' mental health
Mental health is a broad concept that overarches a family of diverse metrics (Bleidorn et al., 2020). As for any other population, it is critical to distinguish and account for the positive and negative aspects of gamer mental health (Keyes, 2003). It includes high levels of well-being and the absence of ill-being symptomatology. For instance, the theories of well-being often focus on satisfaction and positive emotions (Diener et al., 2002; Kim-Prieto et al., 2005). Ill-being (diminished mental health) includes adverse outcomes such as negative emotions, depression, anxiety, or anger (Schalet et al., 2016). The necessity of accounting for the positive and negative health indicators has a long history (WHO, 1947; Headey et al., 1984; Keyes, 2003). Moreover, both mental health continua have different biological correlates, suggesting that they are not merely mirror reflections of each other but distinct phenomena (Ryff et al., 2006). Consequently, some individuals might increase their ill-being symptomatology during pandemics while maintaining similar levels of well-being. Others might reduce their symptomatology with little benefit for their well-being (Keyes, 2003).
The importance of the distinction between well-being and ill-being generalizes to the gamers' mental health. For instance, some studies indicated that problematic gaming is more related to increased ill-being (e.g., depressed mood) than to decreased well-being (e.g., life satisfaction) (Ballou & Rooij, 2021). Consequently, focusing on both aspects of mental health (positive and negative) leads to a more comprehensive perspective. An exclusive focus on positive mental health might underestimate the gaming risks. In contrast, a sole focus on negative indicators might overlook that despite increased symptomatology, some gamers are likely to experience less pronounced life satisfaction deterioration and maintain relatively high satisfaction with life. This distinction might be especially relevant to studying dynamic life changes that might provide challenges mixed with new opportunities, as might have been the case for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Video gaming time measurement
Gaming time can be measured using objective (behavioral) metrics or subjective self-reports. Each method has its advantages and limitations. Behavioral metrics (such as those obtained with telemetry) might be considered the most direct because they involve information logged by the gaming system. Such information can be reported by players from their profile information (e.g., Behnke et al., 2020) or provided directly to the researchers by game publishers (e.g., Vuorre et al., 2022). This method provides meaningful results. Nonetheless, several limitations impede its validity, including constraints that might be specific to shifts in gaming consumption during COVID-19.
First, for some players, the distribution services might overestimate gaming time. For instance, it may be problematic to distinguish active gaming from idling while the game is turned on. This is more likely when players switch between tasks, such as mixing playing with work or education. During the COVID-19 lockdown, many individuals used their computers more frequently for work or learning since they did not attend their usual workplaces or schools. Consequently, they might have their favorite games launched more often even though they were not actively involved, or at least for some time, their involvement was minimal, e.g., doing less engaging tasks such as character customization. Second, behavioral metrics usually use information from the leading digital games' distribution services (e.g., Steam), while individuals also play video games outside of central gaming ecosystems, e.g., using smartphones. Consequently, during a pandemic, an increase in one ecosystem activity might reflect a change in a platform preference rather than the general change in playing time. For instance, players might play more using desktop PCs rather than smartphones because of longer time spent at home and less outside, e.g., commuting. Third, the game systems cannot distinguish whether a specific user uses the account exclusively or other persons from their household also use it. Consequently, when more individuals use the same account, the gaming time attributed to a single account might also increase, even though the primary account user might not change their gaming time or decrease due to the pressure to share the account with other household members. This might be the case during the COVID lockdown when youth and children stayed home and might have used their parent's accounts to play games.
Subjective self-reports are another method for measuring time spent playing video games. This method is more straightforward, as players are asked to reflect on and recall the time spent playing video games over a specified period. This method is free of the limitations presented above. Nonetheless, it has limitations resulting from relying on memory and subjective judgments. Subjective and objective metrics of gaming time are correlated. However, they can link with mental health differently (Oka et al., 2024). Self-reports might be the most feasible for meta-analytical work due to their greater availability.
Video gaming time and well-being
Concerns about gaming consumption's psychological effects are often centered around gaming time (Kaczmarek & Drążkowski, 2014; Vuorre et al., 2022). This might result from several factors, such as the ease of gaming time reporting by gamers, non-gamers (e.g., parents), or digital game distribution services. Indeed, extended gaming durations are characteristic of problematic gaming (Kaczmarek et al., 2022; Severo et al., 2020). However, most players play in a controlled way (Stevens et al., 2021). Thus, the study on problematic gaming does not adequately represent the whole gaming community. For instance, while problematic players spend more time playing and report more physical symptoms, gaming time does not predict physical symptomatology (Kaczmarek et al., 2022). Several studies indicated that how people play matters more than how much they play (Giardina et al., 2021; Przybylski et al., 2010). For instance, in the COVID-19 pandemic, playing for social compensation was related to lower emotional distress during self-isolation (Giardina et al., 2021).
Determining the strength of the link between gaming time and mental health is consequential. If the link in the general players' population is substantial, limiting the amount of game consumption would be a feasible factor in preventing deterioration or improving mental health among players. Suppose the link yields weak or limited to specific subgroups. In that case, the global efforts should be redirected toward pursuing more significant risk and protective factors, e.g., game choice (Greitemeyer & Mügge, 2014), gaming motivation (Przybylski et al., 2010), gamers' psychosocial resources such as self-regulation skills (Luxford et al., 2022), or gamer's clinical status (Cheng et al., 2018). Moreover, players' mental health might be considered in a broader context of life circumstances because, in some cases, extended gaming times reflect players' attempts to escape from problems in real life, leading to psychosocial resource depletion and well-being deterioration (Kaczmarek & Drążkowski, 2014).
Cultural differences in gaming
Gaming is a worldwide phenomenon. However, gaming differs in various world regions, most likely due to differences in cultural norms (Lee & Wohn, 2012). These differences are reflected in national regulations. For instance, China introduced a limitation on the time youth are allowed to play video games, which might influence the link between gaming time and psychological outcomes. Moreover, there are differences in gaming intensity and problematic gaming prevalence between Asian and European countries (Neut et al., 2023). There are also differences between Eastern and Western countries in how players are convinced that playing games can compensate for social relationships, a factor strongly related to mental health (Colwell & Kato, 2003). Finally, the strength of the link between gaming and well-being is influenced by broader cultural dimensions such as national life satisfaction, power distance, or cultural masculinity (Cheng et al., 2018). These findings indicate that cultural factors might moderate the links between gaming time and well-being and are necessary to account for while synthesizing the findings we investigate.
Overview of the present investigation
We aimed to integrate and evaluate findings that measured gaming time and the mental health of video game players during the pandemic. We aimed to determine the size of the change in gaming time (pandemic to pre-pandemic or pre-lockdown levels) and whether gaming time was related to mental health during the pandemic. Furthermore, we aimed to test possible moderators that might reveal significant effects in some groups or contexts. We focused on longitudinal studies that involved two measurement points because this method is the most robust in determining change. We expected significant increases in gaming time during the COVID-19 pandemic relative to pre-pandemic levels. However, building upon previous theories and research on well-being and video gaming, we expected negligible-to-weak effects of gaming time on mental health. Examining these effects quantitatively is essential to provide an empirical perspective on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gaming population. This might help understand past pandemic events' psychological impact and provide an informed basis for possible future pandemics or other events involving lockdowns.