Gaming and Health

What new research says about time spent gaming and what parents should watch for

Video games can be a source of connection, creativity and stress relief. For many teenagers and young adults, gaming is where they unwind, socialise, and switch off from a demanding world.

But like anything immersive and rewarding, it can become easy to overdo.

And new research suggests that when gaming tips into too much, it doesn’t just affect free time, it starts to affect health.

What the study found

Researchers at Curtin University in Australia recently looked at how the number of hours spent gaming each week linked to overall health.

They surveyed 317 university students and split them into three groups:

• Those who gamed up to five hours a week
  
• Those who gamed between five and ten hours
  
• Those who gamed more than ten hours
  

The findings were clear: the first two groups looked similar in terms of their overall wellbeing. But once gaming passed 10 hours a week, noticeable health declines appeared.

Those in the high-use group were more likely to:

• Eat poorly
  
• Sleep less
  
• Gain excess weight
  
• Show higher levels of body fat

In short, beyond a certain point, gaming didn’t just take up time, it seemed to displace other habits that support physical and emotional health.

Why it matters for young people

The researchers focused on 20-year-olds for a reason: it’s a life stage where habits become harder to unpick. What gets normalised at this age often becomes part of how someone copes, escapes or finds balance into adulthood.

That’s why this isn’t about demonising gaming. It’s about noticing when one way of switching off starts to switch off everything else — sleep, nutrition, movement, and sometimes even motivation.

What to look for as a parent

If your teenager or young adult is gaming regularly, it’s worth paying attention to what it’s crowding out, not just how long it lasts.

Look for:

• Skipped meals or disrupted appetite
  
• Day/night sleep reversal
  
• Missed responsibilities or isolating behaviour
  
• A shift in mood or motivation when not gaming

It’s not always about addiction or crisis. More likely, it’s that the game becomes the only reliable form of relief and other parts of life get neglected in the process.

What helps

You don’t need to ban gaming.

What helps most is rebalancing the week and building a rhythm that includes other sources of release, structure and reward.

That could look like:

• Setting shared expectations around tech boundaries
  
• Helping your young person plan time for sleep, food, and movement
  
• Offering support with emotional regulation, especially if gaming is being used to manage anxiety or low mood
  
• Talking openly about what gaming gives them — connection, progress, escape — and finding ways to support those needs more widely
  

When to act

If your child seems stuck – gaming all night, withdrawing from daily life, or unable to stop despite clear impact – they may need more structured support.

At Synapse, we work with young people whose habits are out of balance.

We don’t demonise games or jump to labels. We listen, build trust, and help them reconnect with a healthier rhythm of life that they feel ownership of.

 Change sticks best when it’s not about rules or guilt, but about feeling better and living better.