What are the effects of video games on school achievement? Are we doing kids a disservice by letting them play on a daily basis? Or does gaming actually sharpen children’s mental faculties, and help them perform better in school?
We need more research to answer these questions definitively. In particular, we need randomized, controlled experiments, and those are lacking. But based on the limited information we have now, it seems that extreme claims on either side of the spectrum are wrong.
On the one hand, playing video games probably doesn’t harm school performance — not as long as kids don’t play so much that they neglect school-related activities, like reading, or skimp on sleep. And not as long as the games they play are age-appropriate, and don’t cause emotional troubles.
On the other hand, video games aren’t a magical pill for boosting IQ, or transforming poor students into excellent ones. But it appears that kids who play games with moderate frequency — a few hours a week — tend to have better academic skills than kids who don’t play video games at all.
In addition, there is evidence that certain types of games can enhance spatial skills, and possibly help children with dyslexia learn to read.
Here are the details.
What happens when we introduce video games into the home?
Evidence for short-term, negative impacts on school performance
The best way to understand the effects of video games on school performance is to conduct randomized, controlled experiments. As I’ve already noted, these are in short supply. But one exception is a small experiment conducted by Robert Weis and Brittany Cerankosky.
They selected 64 boys living in the U.S. who didn’t own any video game systems. Then they randomly assigned each boy to one of two conditions:
- boys in the “video games now” group were each given a new system immediately
- boys in the “video games later” group didn’t receive systems until the study was completed
Four months after the study began, the researchers examined the boys’ academic performance at school. And they found evidence of an effect.
Not only did the kids with new game systems spend less time doing homework, they also performed worse on standardized tests of reading and writing four month’s later. Moreover, their teachers were more likely to report academic problems (Weis and Cerankosky 2010).
That sounds worrying, but we have to keep in mind: It’s just one small study, and critics raise the point that these kids had never before owned a game console. Maybe they slacked off at school because gaming was a novelty. If researchers had tracked them longer, maybe these kids would have eventually learned to balance school and game play (Drummond and Sauer 2014).
Is there support for this idea? Yes.
Correlational studies have failed to find links between general video gaming and the development of school problems
For example, in a study of more than 3,100 school children in Europe, researchers found no evidence for reduced achievement among habitual gamers.
On the contrary, video game playing in this study was actually linked with higher academic achievement — even after the researchers controlled for socio-economic status and other relevant factors (Kovess-Masfety et al 2016).
Similarly, studies in Australia have failed to find evidence that gaming is linked with worsened academic performance.
In one study, researchers tracked the outcomes of more than 1200 third graders. If kids played video games more than an hour each day, did they end up with lower test scores in reading or mathematics? The answer was no. In standardized tests, the scores of “gamer” kids were no different, on average, than those of non-gamers (Mundy et al 2020).
And in a study of more than 1700 adolescents, the only statistically significant link was favorable to gaming: Kids who spent at least two hours on the weekend playing video games tended to score slightly higher on a national assessment of reading ability (Islam et al 2020).
What about video game content? Does it matter if games are violent? Or educational?
It might, yes. For example, Erin Hastings led a survey of 70 school boys, aged 6 to 10 years (Hastings et al 2010). Her team asked parents to describe their sons’ usage of video games, and to report on their sons’ academic performance (e.g., the boys’ grade point averages).
Subsequent analysis revealed that time spent playing was linked with low school competence — but only for violent video games. Kids who played educational video games (like Math Blaster or Reader Rabbit) did not suffer academically.
You can read more about educational gaming, and the effects of video games on school achievement, here.
Other research hints that the mode of game play matters
Multi-player versus single-player gaming
Consider research on the PISA, or Programme for International Student Assessment. It’s a highly-regarded scholastic achievement test taken by 15-year-olds throughout the world. Does performance on this test correlate with video game use?
In one study, researchers examined the test results of more than 190,000 teens, and found evidence of a small, negative effect. But it was only for one subject area — reading — and only among students who reported playing multi-player video games “almost every day.”
When compared with teens who never played video games, these avid players tended to have lower reading scores.There was no effect observed for kids who played single-player games (Drummond and Sauer 2014).
In a subsequent study, Francesca Borgonovi analyzed a more recent set of PISA scores, and reported a similar pattern: Multi-player gaming, rather than single-player gaming, was linked with lower performance in reading.
In this study, frequent use of multi-player games was associated with a “steep reduction in achievement,” particularly among struggling students, and particularly for students taking pencil-and-paper (as opposed to computer-based) tests.
By contrast, “moderate” use of single-player games was associated with a performance advantage (Borgonovi 2016).
So what could explain links between video gaming and better academic outcomes?
One possibility is that kids with academic risk factors are less likely to get access to video games — resulting in lower average academic scores for non-gamers. Researchers try to control for this possibility by making statistical adjustments for known risk factors (like low socioeconomic status), but they probably haven’t adjusted for everything.
Another possibility is that video gaming sharpens certain cognitive skills, which can then help students in the classroom.
For example, there is evidence that we can enhance spatial skills and some attention skills by playing action video games (e.g., Bediou et al 2018). As I note in my article about video games and attention, action video games might even help children with dyslexia learn to read.
And, as Bruno Sauce and his colleagues point out, video games present players with a wide range of cognitive challenges. As a result, kids do more than practice spatial processing and visual attention. Depending on the game, players might also improve working memory — or even language comprehension.
In pursuit of this hypothesis, Sauce and his team tracked the development of nearly 1,000 primary school children.
When the kids were 9-10 years old, they took a battery of intelligence tests — including tests of auditory learning, verbal working memory, language comprehension, spatial skills, and the inhibition of impulses.
In addition, researchers asked children to self-report the amount of time they spent playing video games. And — two years later — the kids repeated the intelligence tests, and researchers compared the results.
As it turned out, playing video games was associated with a pattern of modest intellectual enhancement over time. Moreover, the effect, though rather small, remained even after controlling for children’s genetics and socioeconomic status (Sauce et al 2022).
The takeaway? There is reason for concern, but the evidence is mixed.
Video game detractors seem eager to publicize studies that support their views. But the evidence suggests that there isn’t any simple lesson regarding the effects of video games on school performance.
Yes, frequent use of multi-player games might put youth at higher risk for poor reading performance, perhaps because kids replace reading time with the excitement of multi-player games. This interpretation is consistent with the results of a study of American adolescents, aged 10 to 19: Kids who played video games spent 30% less time reading (Cummings and Vandewater 2007).
Video games might also have a negative impact through other mechanisms. For instance:
- Playing video games at night can disrupt sleep, which could explain decrements in school performance.
- Studies suggest that kids who regularly play video games are at a slightly increased risk for developing lower levels of “proactive control,” which might impair a child’s ability to remain quietly attentive and focused during low-key academic tasks.
- Playing violent video games may have small, short-term, negative effects on behavior.
And it’s undeniable that some kids use games excessively — so much that gaming dominates their lives and interferes with study time.
It goes without saying that any pastime can become problematic if we allow it to displace crucial developmental activities. Read more about the signs of problematic video game use in this Parenting Science article.
But studies also suggest that moderate gaming may have little or no negative impact on school achievement, and it might even have positive effects.
So there are both costs and benefits associated with video games, and these vary depending on the details.
More information
For more evidence-based information about the effects of video games, check out the these pages.
References: The effects of video games on school achievement
Bediou B, Adams DM, Mayer RE, Tipton E, Green CS, Bavelier D. 2018. Meta-analysis of action video game impact on perceptual, attentional, and cognitive skills. Psychol Bull. 144(1):77-110.
Borgonovi F. 2016. Video gaming and gender differences in digital and printed reading performance among 15-year-olds students in 26 countries. J Adolesc. 48:45-61.
Cummings HM and Vandewater EA. 2007. Relation of Adolescent Video Game Play to Time Spent in Other Activities. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 161(7):684-689.
Drummond A and Sauer JD2. 2014. Video-games do not negatively impact adolescent academic performance in science, mathematics or reading. PLoS One. 9(4):e87943.
Hastings EC, Karas TL, Winsler A, Way E, Madigan A, Tyler S. 2009. Young children’s video game/computer game use: Relations with school performance and behavior. Issues Ment Health Nurs. 30(10):638-49.
Islam MI, Biswas RK, Khanam R. 2020. Effect of internet use and electronic game-play on academic performance of Australian children. Sci Rep. 10(1):21727.
Kovess-Masfety V, Keyes K, Hamilton A, Hanson G, Bitfoi A, Golitz D, Koç C, Kuijpers R, Lesinskiene S, Mihova Z, Otten R, Fermanian C, Pez O. 2016. Is time spent playing video games associated with mental health, cognitive and social skills in young children? Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 51(3):349-57.
Sauce B, Liebherr M, Judd N, and Klingberg T. 2022. The impact of digital media on children’s intelligence while controlling for genetic differences in cognition and socioeconomic background. Sci Rep. 12(1):7720.
Mundy LK, Canterford L, Hoq M, Olds T, Moreno-Betancur M, Sawyer S, Kosola S, and Patton GC. 2020. Electronic media use and academic performance in late childhood: A longitudinal study. PLoS One. 15(9):e0237908
Weis R and Cerankosky BC. 2010. Effects of video-game ownership on young boys’ academic and behavioral functioning: a randomized, controlled study. Psychol Sci. 21(4):463-70.
Written content of “The effects of video games on school achievement” last modified 5/2024.
Portions of the text are derived from earlier versions of this article (“The effects of video games on school achievement”) written by the same author.
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