When You Play Video Games Every Day, This Is What Happens To You

There was a time, long, long ago, when gaming was a niche interest that took place in arcades at the end of town. Oh, how the world has changed. Gaming is now pretty much a universal pastime in some age brackets, and over the last few years, they've only grown in popularity. In 2020, approximately 227 million Americans wiled away their time at home with games on their consoles and tablets, according to USA Today. And by 2023, over 3 billion people worldwide are expected to play video games as a pastime, according to Statista.

But if your mom ever told you that staring at the TV for too long would give you square eyes, you might be questioning what your everyday gaming habits could be doing to your body. Pretty much ever since video games started to appear, there's been hot debate over their effects on public health. And while some concerns, like the development of video game addiction, are legitimate, gaming can also be beneficial. In this article, we'll take a look at what will happen if you play video games every day.

If you've noticed that you're catching things with more ease recently, your gaming habit might have something to do with it. Playing video games every day can improve your hand-eye coordination, according to Frontiers. As the study notes, this effect is particularly noticeable when it comes to action real-time strategy games (ARSG) due to their increased demand for hand-eye coordination during gameplay.

Hand-eye coordination can decline with age, according to Healthline. And while we don't often think to "train" ourselves to retain this skill specifically, it's useful to partake in hobbies that challenge our coordination and motor skills. If you're not a huge gamer, there are plenty of other ways to improve your hand-eye coordination, some as simple as throwing and catching a ball or juggling. Regular exercise — swimming in particular — can also help to improve your hand-eye coordination as you age, as well as your balance, as a study published in the Journal of Nutrition, Health, and Aging shows.

A study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry found that between 0.3% and 1% of the general U.S. population fits the criteria for video game addiction, also known as internet gaming disorder (IGD). As the popularity of video games rises, the prevalence of the condition will undoubtedly rise too.

Signs of internet gaming disorder can involve thinking about gaming persistently, requiring increasing time playing video games to feel positive, prioritizing gaming over other social or work obligations, or lying to people about how much time you spend gaming, according to WebMD. It's also worth noting if other people are noticing an increase in your gaming patterns or behavior changes, as it can sometimes be difficult to spot symptoms in yourself. If you have concerns about internet gaming disorder, in yourself or in someone you know, it can be helpful to speak to a doctor or therapist.

If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

All that hacking and slashing, hammering away at a joystick, can cause some issues in your thumbs. Excessive regular gaming can increase your likelihood of repetitive strain injury (RSI), which occurs when repeated motions cause stress and damage to your tendons, muscles, and nerves, according to Healthline. If you play on a gaming console, you're more likely to experience an injury to your thumbs, whereas PC gamers tend to exhibit more strain injuries in their wrist, explained Performance Health.

Repetitive strain injuries are particularly risky for Esports competitors, who tend to spend long hours at a time practicing or competing. Stiffness in your joints, aching, swelling, or any pain during gaming can all be signs of RSI, according to Performance Health. As with many activity-related injuries, correct form and prevention is your first port of call to keep problems at bay, so make sure to take regular breaks from gaming each hour. It can also help to strengthen the muscles around joints, through stress ball or hand trainer exercises, to reduce the risk of injury, or to wear a wrist brace to help support the structure of your hand while you game.

Modern gaming is a marvel of storytelling, with titles like "The Last of Us," "Red Dead Redemption," and the "Grand Theft Auto" series creating compelling storylines and characters that you feel like you know intimately. And this could be having an effect outside the games too, with gaming helping us feel more empathetic, according to a study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science.

The study looked at the effect of in-game storytelling on participant's theory of mind, a social-cognitive skill that gives people the ability to recognize and understand mental states, emotions, and desires, both of themselves and other people (via Verywell Mind). The study found that narrative elements in video games help to improve an individual's abilities to recognize and assign emotional frequencies to other people (affective theory of mind). The study also pointed out that while video games have often been criticized for their perceived negative effects on people, these findings indicate that they could have prosocial benefits.

Approximately 5 to 10% of the population have dyslexia in some form, according to Dyslexia Help from the University of Michigan. For those who have the condition, it could be useful to know that there may be a link between regular gaming and improved reading abilities, as found in several studies highlighted by the American Psychological Association. That said, these studies focused on children who were learning to read, not adults.

One of the studies, in particular, published in Current Biology, looked at the effect of action video games on children with dyslexia. The children who participated in the study were tasked with playing action video games for 80 minutes at a time for nine days (lucky kids!). At the end of the study, the researchers noted that the children's reading speeds had improved without becoming any less accurate. This is an improvement equivalent to a year's worth of regular reading. The researchers also found that kids were more attentive after completing their course of video game training, which could contribute to their reading skills.

Video games and social isolation or loneliness have long been associated in modern culture, and there's a reason for that. For individuals who exhibit video game addiction, feelings of loneliness can be higher, as seen in a study published in the Iranian Journal of Public Health. The study, focusing on video game addiction in children specifically, found that male students had higher levels of loneliness.

Despite this, there's also a strong case that video games can help to combat loneliness, especially when playing certain games. Researchers from the University of Saskatchewan and Queensland University of Technology looked at the effects of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) on loneliness and well-being in a study published in Frontiers and Psychology. The popular game "World of Warcraft" helped to decrease loneliness and improve feelings of well-being, thanks in part to the meaningful social interactions and relationships that can be constructed in online multiplayer games. This study demonstrates that gaming can continue to serve a positive social and psychological function.

If you've had a long day at work, there's nothing quite like firing up the console and getting lost in a different world for a while. And, as it turns out, there's a link between gaming and stress reduction, as Verywell Mind noted. In fact, this could even be the case when playing more violent games, running contrary to the belief that shoot-em-ups lead to increased stress levels.

Video games can be instrumental in helping people recover from strain and stress, as a study published in the Journal of Media Psychology found, which surveyed more than 1,600 participants. Video games were also seen to be more beneficial as a stress-managing tool for those who didn't have a lot of social support. Games can be helpful for stress reduction regardless of whether you're playing with people or against them, as a study in Computers in Human Behavior showed; however, the study did find that people playing cooperatively gained slightly more of a de-stressing benefit than those playing competitively.