Some video games offer mental-health benefits

Playing some video games can be healthy, a new study finds — if they are designed to support mental well-being.

Consider this scenario in PlaySmart. “Taylor was one of my best friends. We drifted away and it feels like it was my fault.”

As you play this game as Taylor’s friend, you see what pushed her away. Then you try making different choices. Along the way, you learn when and how to get Taylor some help. And as you do, the story changes. You two end up staying friends.

Your friend Taylor is really struggling! How can you help her without messing up your friendship? Kids can try out different approaches in this game, called PlaySmart.

play2PREVENT Lab

This game aims to give teens the tools and confidence to navigate thorny situations involving mental-health struggles or abuse of opioid drugs. Players “see what happens — the good and the bad,” says Lynn Fiellin. A doctor and behavioral scientist, Fiellin works at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, in Hanover, N.H.

The game was developed, she says, in hopes of lowering a teen’s risk of drug addiction or suffering a real mental-health crisis.

But can a video game really do that?

Fiellin was part of a team that put PlaySmart (and other video games) to the test with human volunteers. And they did it in much the same way scientists check whether medicines or other treatments work. PlaySmart indeed helps boost teens’ mental health, the results now suggest.

These researchers shared their findings August 17 in JAMA Network Open.

Serious fun

Teens who played PlaySmart had fewer depression symptoms a full year later than teens who played a different video game during the trial. “That’s very promising,” says Linda Charmaraman. She directs the Youth, Media & Wellbeing research lab at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She did not help develop the game.

Many researchers are working on what they call “serious” video games, or ones that benefit society, Charmaraman says. But it’s rare, she notes, for this type of intervention to show an effect that lasts a year or more.

For the trial, Fiellin’s group brought games (and snacks — lots of snacks) to 15 high schools around Connecticut. Students were randomly assigned to either play PlaySmart or to choose a different game. The other games (such as The Sims) hadn’t been designed to teach healthy skills. All recruits played once or twice a week for six weeks.

In the video game PlaySmart, you role-play as a teen who faces difficult decisions. Some choices worsen mental health or lead to drug abuse. Other decisions lead to healthy outcomes.

By the end, kids who’d played PlaySmart knew more about opioid drugs and saw them as more dangerous than those who had played other games. That’s one thing Fiellin says her group had hoped to see. After all, you’re less likely to try something that you see as dangerous. Three months later, the health-gaming group remembered a lot of facts they had learned. But their sense of danger from opioids was fading.

The PlaySmart group’s views on getting help from a therapist or counselor didn’t fade, though. They were more likely to view seeking help as a good thing than were teens who had played another game. And this effect stayed fairly constant throughout the study. This might help explain how playing this game could have reduced teens’ symptoms of depression, the researchers think.

Says Fiellin, just knowing that there are “opportunities and options for help” may have made a difference.

Adds Charmaraman, knowing how and when to seek help is hugely important in depression intervention and prevention. A lot of teens, she says, “feel like they need to wait for something very extreme to happen.” But that’s not true. It’s better to ask for help early than wait for a crisis, she explains.

For kids already interested in gaming, she thinks it makes sense to choose a game that could boost social skills and mental health.

PlaySmart contains mini games. In this one, you create social media posts that share what you’re learning about opioids and mental health.

play2PREVENT Lab

Meeting teens where they are

PlaySmart is one of five games, and counting, created by the play2PREVENT Lab. Fiellin launched this lab in 2009 after noticing how engrossed her own kids were in gaming. “I thought this was a way we could deliver healthy information and skill-building to kids,” she recalls.

She wanted to meet kids where they already are — on screens.

Caroline Barry, a behavioral health scientist, joined the lab because she was excited about leveraging screen time for good. Depression, anxiety, addiction and other issues are widespread among today’s teens, she notes. Traditional prevention strategies rely mainly on in-person programs at schools and community centers. Putting the same kind of teaching into games, Barry says, could “have more reach and potentially broader impact.”

She, Fiellin and other experts in health and education teamed up with video-game designers to make each game. They also have been inviting teens to give feedback on early versions of each. In the past, Fiellin points out, these teen critics have said things like, “No one would ever wear that.” They’ve also pointed out when the slang being used was out of date.

When each game is ready, the company Playbl helps get it into the hands of teens. They don’t post the games on app stores. Instead, teachers or school administrators can reach out to get a program started at their school.

PlaySmart is a relatively new game. Another one, Smokescreen, focuses on preventing kids from vaping and smoking. It has almost 10,000 active players right now, says Kirby Salerno, who runs Playbl.

What’s next? Fiellin’s team is now working on two new games. One is for kids with autism and their families. It focuses on identifying strengths of neurodivergent people. Another game will focus on social media and mental health.

“The idea,” says Fiellin, “will be to help kids and their parents know how to navigate social media and make better choices.”