PLAYING video games can lead to children becoming better adjusted, researchers at Oxford University have found.

The research by the Oxford Internet Institute has found that young people who play video games for less than an hour a day had higher levels of sociability and were more likely to say they were satisfied with their lives compared to those who never used video games or those who play them for three hours or more.

But the findings also show that the influence of video games on children is very small when compared to other factors such as whether a child is from a functioning family or whether they are materially deprived.

The study’s author, Dr Andrew Przybylski, said: “These results support recent laboratory-based experiments that have identified the downsides to playing electronic games.

“However, high levels of video game-playing appear to be only weakly linked to children's behavioural problems in the real world. Likewise, the small, positive effects we observed for low levels of play on electronic games do not support the idea that video games on their own can help children develop in an increasingly digital world.

“Some of the positive effects identified in past gaming research were mirrored in these data but the effects were quite small, suggesting that any benefits may be limited to a narrow range of action games.”

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