Are video games helping students cope with the pandemic?

It has been a few weeks since Southeastern Louisiana University closed down due to growing coronavirus concerns. While in quarantine, one can get very bored and look for things to do.

Not for some students, however, as they have been gamers for most of their waking life and staying inside playing video games in quarantine is just another day.

“I’ve actually been playing a lot more video games since the quarantine started,” stated Zachary Roy, a sophomore psychology major, further adding, “I think it helps take my mind off of all the chaos and allows me to relax and feel at ease.”

Video games have been seeing record sales and the growing amount of active users. Steam, a popular PC gaming platform, had seen 22 million users online as of March 28, according to SteamDB.

Ryan Brown, a sophomore accounting major, is one of these active users.

“I would have to say I spend 90 percent of my time playing video games on Steam,” said Brown. “I think I spend so much time gaming because my friends game too so I am playing with them to cope with my social anxiety.”

Student gamers are playing video games in quarantine as a way to cope with a variety of circumstances. For Roy, it is to escape the uncertainty of the current pandemic and for Brown, it is to relieve his social anxiety from being away from others.

“Through video games, we can have both moments of self-escape and socialization where we don’t have to focus or deal with the strange new world we are being thrust into by the virus,” noted Sean Riley, a graduate student studying marriage and family counseling.

Riley said he believes the main driving force with the number of times students are playing video games is the social aspect.

“To deprive people of social interaction is one of the worst things for mental health and likely why people are having a hard time with this,” commented Riley.

With student gamers pouring all this time into playing video games to escape from reality, would this form a sort of addiction to constantly craving an escape from this pandemic?

According to the Psychology of Popular Media Culture, the research found that people who are prone to anxiety and depression are more likely to develop an addiction to video games.

Douglas Gentile, professor of psychology at Iowa State University, who was a researcher in the journal stated, “For most people, playing video games is a normal, healthy way to relieve stress, but some reach a point and can no longer control that behavior. Loss of control is, of course, a hallmark of addiction. If students in the study were more stressed and they played video games specifically as a way of coping, then their risk of dysfunctional symptoms increased.”

Video games are a nice treat away from the uncertainty of this current pandemic, but relying on it too much could lead to an addiction that can possibly disrupt your life. Make sure to have more healthy ways to cope with being stuck in quarantine.