Category: Youth, Media, Wellbeing

By Matilda Petkus

Video gaming is becoming an increasingly popular activity amongst adolescents with around 90% of adolescents regularly gaming (Donati et al., 2021). A majority of the past literature on adolescent video game usage focused on the negative outcomes of video gaming, however new research has revealed that video gaming has the potential to result in health benefits. A recent review paper by Dr. Jason Nagata, and published by Current Pediatrics Reports, titled Health Benefits of Video Games in Adolescents and Young Adults examines these benefits. This review paper reveals that, when enjoyed in moderation, video gaming can benefit adolescents in a multitude of ways. For many, gaming can increase their psychological well-being through an enhanced mood, and an exploration of autonomy and self-expression. Gaming can also increase feelings of connectedness through both in-person and virtual team play, creating an increase of opportunities to engage with new people. When used as a social space, video games can help teens foster friendships and gain a sense of belonging that they may not have outside of gaming. Some games encourage physical activity which can lead to increased motivation and improvements in one’s body composition. Gaming can impact academic performances as well, with benefits such as increased cognitive functioning, greater processing speed, and a sustained attention span.  

Given all of these benefits, the paper maintains that conversations between adolescents, parents, and clinicians about how video games affect teens in both positive and negative ways is crucial. Both clinicians and parents are urged to engage in nonjudgemental dialogue with youth in order to explore the content and patterns of video gaming amongst teens. To inspire these conversations, The Center of Excellence’s 5 Cs Media Use (Child, Content, Calm, Crowding Out, and Communication) provides families and clinicians methods to create family media plans that promote balanced media use for adolescents. Examples from the article detailing how the 5 Cs of media use can be applied to video gaming include, but are not limited to:  

• Crowding out (Displacement of other activities), prioritize making sure that teens have time for other activities such as sleeping, eating, working out, having in-person interactions, and other day-to-day activities.  
• Child (Unique motivations for gaming), talk to teens about their motivations for video gaming, what games are popular/played, etc.  
• Content (The nature of the material in the video games), engage in open discussion about beneficial versus harmful material in video games. 

With video gaming becoming such a pillar in the lives of adolescents, it is important for parents and clinicians to understand that video gaming can positively impact youth in a multitude of ways. Health Benefits of Video Games in Adolescents and Young Adults by Dr. Nagata serves as a reminder that technology has the potential to be a powerful tool, but in order for these benefits to be fully realized, clinicians and parents must engage in conversations with youth to create parameters or family media plans. To read the full article, click here! 

The mission of the Youth Advisory Board for the Youth, Media, & Wellbeing Research Lab is to advise our lab about how to create and sustain the most relevant, timely, and feasible virtual digital wellbeing summer workshop for adolescent girls. Because we intentionally recruited from within our prior summer’s workshop participants, we did not have any difficulty with obtaining a commitment from 8 YAB advisors since we had already established a rapport. We met 7 times for 90 minutes each between December 2021 and July 2022. Our advisors were a diverse group of girls ranging in age from 12-24, since some of them were workshop attendees and others had been small group workshop facilitators. One of the strengths and challenges of our YAB was how diverse it was (e.g., race/ethnicity, geography), particularly in terms of age (3 middle schoolers, 2 high schoolers, and 3 post-high school). During the year, we also invited a Youth Chair who was our lab intern and a senior in college. After the first TAM YAB national meeting, we were inspired by more ideas about being youth-centered and immediately implemented subcommittees that the youth advisors volunteered for. This helped encourage active participation in areas they wanted to personally develop. Highlights of the impact of the YAB include, a) changing the structure of our summer workshop to be shorter each day but last longer (5 days instead of 4), b) test driving workshop lessons and shaping them for age-appropriateness and fun, c) designing a YAB tshirt and creating our logo and motto, and d) helping to redefine what it means to produce a safe all-girls Zoom space. Highlights of the professional development opportunities for the youth advisors included a) co-leading activity intros and ice breakers for the summer workshop ’22, b) Wellesley College tour for teen girls in the local area, c) graduate/professional school panel for the older youth, and d) opportunity to contribute to a book chapter on our inaugural YAB experience.