Student Research Guide WQ23/ Video Games and Depression in Young Adults

The use of video games in adolescent therapy in regards to depression has a large impact on efficacy, with some studies showing a 17% increase in remission. Additionally, video games have a positive impact on cognitive development, with children showing more acute cognitive responses. These benefits also extend to adult and seniors playing games, showing a trend of remission in depression.

• Video games have a positive effect on depression remission, increasing efficacy.
• The effectiveness of video games between age groups may vary, but all age groups have a positive experience from the use of them in psychotherapy.
• Genre of game does appear to matter, with different types having different effects.

Advice for future researchers:

• Due to the nature of this topic being somewhat within the past 40 years, the amount of research that has been done is a relatively small sample size, and most is locked behind paywall.
• There has been a few reviews done on a collection of raw data on the topic of video games and adolescent depression which collects a bunch of the raw data. Finding reviews are useful as it provides analysis of the trend and also provides sources in it of themselves.
• The topic is broad, and the psychological effects of games on different age groups does vary, narrowing search and points of argument will greatly increase the efficacy of the research.

Reflection on research experience:

The research for this topic was not easy. First, the terms used would often bring up similar sources, and the age group specified is not the most common for this type of research. The other issue was sifting through all the data to form a thesis that was strong enough to argue a point. A few sources created the most amount of data for the thesis , and the notetaker assignments done made it easy to keep track of which sources came from where.