Researchers surveyed more than four thousand public high school students in Connecticut. The students provided anonymous information about their gaming habits, indicators of their health (such as their body mass index), and risky health behaviors (such as their use of drugs and alcohol).
The results suggest that physical and mental health problems linked to video games depend on a student’s psychological investment in those games. Those who were more deeply invested in the games, deemed “problematic” gamers, were more at risk than “recreational” gamers.
The researchers classified a student as a problematic video gamer if he or she agreed with all of the