- Mary-Faith Martinez
A lot of people don’t think there are many advantages to playing video games since it’s not framed as a productive way to spend time.
But new research has proven them wrong. According to a study published in JMIR Serious Games, video game players tend to have traits that make them stronger than others, depending on the types of games they prefer.
Although it will come as a surprise to some, playing video games helps people fight loneliness and become more stoic.
Researchers surveyed 2,252 shoppers at a video game store on their attitudes and gaming habits for the study. A PsyPost analysis reported that they were especially interested in anyone who regularly played open-world games or accessible games.
The results showed that people who played open-world games and people who played accessible games were more stoic and less isolated. It seemed like playing a combination of the two different kinds of games made the effect even stronger.
Open-world video games place players in a new environment that they have to figure out on their own, while accessible video games have a simpler, mood-boosting environment. What stood out to the researchers most was that these are both single-player games.
One of the study authors, Andreas Eisingerich from Imperial College London, noted, “We were surprised that video games people play themselves may actually help reduce perceived loneliness … There may be more to video games than cognitive escapism.”
Since the world is in the middle of what some experts have called a loneliness epidemic, this information feels extra significant.
That was how former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy described the extreme disconnection people were feeling in a 2023 advisory that he issued. More recent statistics from the Washington University in St. Louis School of Public Health confirmed that loneliness is still a big problem.
In March 2026, those researchers shared their findings, which included 40% of adults across eight different countries saying that they felt lonely. Young adults experienced loneliness in even greater numbers.
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Stoicism obviously doesn’t get as much attention as loneliness these days, but the two are connected. Ancient philosophers used stoicism to address the problems that everyone faces. Eisingerich and his colleagues thought that this could ease the pain of isolation.
Stoics believe they shouldn’t waste their energy on things they can’t control, which could help them see time alone as a good thing that gives them space to reflect. The researchers concluded that the specific games they examined promoted stoic values like self-reliance and mindfulness.
It’s hard to know how this study should be interpreted when previous research has contradicted it.
Gaming is pretty popular, but people who aren’t very familiar with it probably have an image of someone staring at a bright screen in a dark room come to mind when they think of playing video games. It’s stereotypical, but it also might be partially true depending on who you ask.
Other studies, like one published in Frontiers in Virtual Reality in 2021, have shown that playing video games leads to an increase in loneliness and anxiety. In that case, researchers did wonder if their findings were influenced by the COVID pandemic.
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It’s hard to know what to make of that, especially since Eisingerich’s study didn’t dig deep into participants’ lives to learn more about other factors that could impact how lonely they felt. Maybe it’s not as black-and-white as it seems.
We might not be able to definitively say that video games are boosting all players’ mental health, but the research does make it seem like a strong possibility. People who play video games could very well gain emotional and mental resilience from their hobby instead of just entertainment.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
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