Are Video Games Good for Your Brain? What 133 Studies Say

Are video games good for your brain? Probably yes, modestly. A 2026 review of 133 studies found small but significant links between playing and memory, attention, spatial ability and cognitive control, and action games show the clearest gains in controlled trials. But most of the evidence is correlational, the effects are small, and more play isn’t always better.

Below are the studies behind that answer, read in the papers rather than the headlines: reviews of more than a hundred studies, brain scans of thousands of children, and a natural experiment created by a console shortage. For each, we give who was studied, what was measured and what the study cannot show. We make Omniphile, an app for tracking games, films and books, not medicine, and nothing here is medical advice.

How strong is the evidence that video games are good for your brain?

The broadest answer is a review published in Acta Psychologica in 2026. Researchers led by Rumei Zhao gathered 133 studies published between January 2005 and August 2025, with 14,245 participants, and ran three separate meta-analyses: one of correlational studies, one comparing gamers with non-gamers, and one of controlled trials in which people were assigned to play. In all three, gaming had a statistically significant but small association with memory, spatial ability, visual attention, cognitive control and intelligence.¹

The authors rated most of the studies as medium quality (70%), a quarter as high and 5% as low. Gender, age group, health, the type of game, the length of the intervention and the country did not significantly change the results.¹ Coverage of the paper notes its other limits: skills were measured in different ways, sometimes by self-report, the trials ranged from minutes to dozens of hours, and few studies checked whether any benefit lasted after people stopped playing.²

Genre matters more in an earlier review. A 2018 meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin looked only at action games, such as fast-paced shooters, which demand split-second attention. Regular action gamers outperformed non-gamers by about half a standard deviation, and in long-term training studies, playing action games improved cognition by about a third of a standard deviation more than playing other commercial games. The gains were clearest in attention and spatial skills. The authors also warn that published studies probably overstate the effect by about 30%, because studies with weaker results are less likely to be published.³

Are video games good for kids’ brains?

Two studies drew on the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, which follows thousands of US children.

• Brain scans. A 2022 study in JAMA Network Open compared 9- and 10-year-olds who never played video games with those who played at least 21 hours a week, three hours a day or more, from a sample of 2,217 children. The gamers did better on tests of impulse control and working memory inside an MRI scanner, and showed different activity in brain regions involved in vision, attention and memory.⁴ It is a comparison at one moment, so it can’t show whether gaming built those skills or whether children with those skills are drawn to games.
• Intelligence over two years. A 2022 study in Scientific Reports followed 9,855 children from ages 9–10 for two years. At the start, gaming time was not linked to intelligence. Two years later, children who gamed more had gained more, an effect the authors convert to 2.55 IQ points, after accounting for genetic differences and socioeconomic status.⁵ Screen time was self-reported, and the authors note that their genetic measure is most accurate for children of European descent.

In the second study, boys gamed about twice as much as girls.⁵ The first compared children who played three hours a day or more with children who never played, so it says little about an ordinary amount of play.

Are video games better for your brain than TV or social media?

The same Scientific Reports study is one of the few to compare kinds of screen time side by side. Children reported how long they spent watching TV and online videos, socializing through social media, texting and video chat, and gaming. Over two years, gaming showed the clearest link with gains in intelligence; socializing showed none; and watching showed a smaller gain that was no longer significant once parents’ education was taken into account.⁵ It is one observational study of children, but it suggests that not all screen time is the same.

Are video games good for your brain as you age?

There is some encouraging evidence. A 2014 meta-analysis in Psychology and Aging pooled 20 experiments, published between 1986 and 2013, in which 474 healthy older adults trained with video games and 439 did not. Training improved reaction time, attention, memory and overall cognition, and the size of the effect depended on the trainees’ age and how long the training lasted.⁶ In the 2026 review, age group did not change the results either.¹

Two cautions apply. The experiments were small, and they measured performance on tests, not daily life or later dementia; none of the research we read shows that gaming prevents dementia. And “brain training” games have been sold with bigger promises than this. In 2016, the maker of Lumosity agreed to pay $2 million to settle US Federal Trade Commission charges over ads claiming its games improved performance at work and school and delayed age-related decline. The FTC said the company “simply did not have the science to back up its ads.”⁷

Are video games good for your mental health?

The strongest evidence on mood comes from an accident of supply. During the 2020–2022 shortages, Japanese retailers sold the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5 by lottery, so who got a console was close to random. A 2024 study in Nature Human Behaviour surveyed 97,602 people in Japan, 8,192 of whom had entered a lottery, and found that owning a console, and playing more, reduced psychological distress and improved life satisfaction by 0.1 to 0.6 standard deviations.⁸

The benefit had a limit: it shrank when gaming went beyond three hours a day. The two consoles also differed in whom they helped most. The authors note that the data come from the pandemic, when estimates may run higher than in normal times, and that the effect they measured is for people who bought a console after winning a lottery.⁸

A 2022 study in Royal Society Open Science took a different route. Seven game publishers shared six weeks of real play data for 38,935 players of games such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Gran Turismo Sport, which the researchers matched with three surveys of how the players felt. They found “little to no evidence” that time spent playing affected well-being, while the players’ reasons for playing were linked to how they felt.⁹

Are video games bad for your brain?

For most players, the research above points to small benefits rather than harm. The clearest risk is losing control. The World Health Organization defines gaming disorder by impaired control over gaming, gaming taking priority over other interests and daily activities, and carrying on despite negative consequences, usually for at least 12 months. It says the disorder affects “only a small proportion” of people who play.¹⁰

A 2021 meta-analysis of 53 studies, with 226,247 participants in 17 countries, put the worldwide prevalence at 3.05%, and at 1.96% in the studies with the most rigorous sampling. The questionnaire a study used explained most of the variation between estimates, and the authors conclude that measurement and sampling issues inflate the figures; rates were about 2.5 times higher in males than in females.¹¹ Long sessions also mean long hours of sitting, the clearest physical risk in research on binge-watching.

What it means for you

• Play for fun, not as medicine. The cognitive effects are real but small. They are a nice side effect of a hobby, not a reason to take one up.
• Fast-paced games have the best evidence. If you want a mental workout, the action-game research points to attention and spatial skills.³
• Watch the dose. In the Japanese study, the well-being gains shrank past three hours a day.⁸ It can’t tell you where your own limit lies, but daily sessions beyond that deserve a second look.
• Know the warning signs. Gaming taking priority over other interests and daily life, and being unable to cut back despite the harm, are the patterns the WHO describes.¹⁰ If that sounds familiar, a doctor is the right person to talk to.
• Be skeptical of brain-training claims. The FTC found that one of the best-known brain-training apps could not back up its promises of better performance at work and school.⁷

Gaming isn’t the only hobby with research behind it; we read the studies on whether reading is good for your brain too.

Seeing how much you play

It is hard to judge the dose without a record. Omniphile, our app for iPhone, iPad and Mac, logs each game by playthrough, times your play sessions and shows your play on statistics heatmaps, so a week of three-hour evenings shows up as one. It is free, with an optional Premium tier, and our guide to the best game backlog apps covers options on Android, the web and PC. A log won’t make gaming better for your brain, but it shows you how much you actually play.

Sources

1. Zhao R, Pang K, Yu J, Zhang W, Kong X, Wang J, Haidabieke A, Ding X, Li J (2026), “The association between video game play and cognitive ability: A systematic review and meta-analysis”, Acta Psychologica 267: 107110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2026.107110 ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. Karina Petrova, PsyPost, July 1, 2026, on the limitations of Zhao et al. (2026). https://www.psypost.org/video-games-might-offer-a-small-boost-to-memory-and-mental-skills/ ↩

3. 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”, Psychological Bulletin 144(1): 77–110. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000130 ↩ ↩²

4. Chaarani B, Ortigara J, Yuan D, Loso H, Potter A, Garavan HP (2022), “Association of Video Gaming With Cognitive Performance Among Children”, JAMA Network Open 5(10): e2235721. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.35721 ↩

5. Sauce B, Liebherr M, Judd N, Klingberg T (2022), “The impact of digital media on children’s intelligence while controlling for genetic differences in cognition and socioeconomic background”, Scientific Reports 12: 7720. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-11341-2 ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. Toril P, Reales JM, Ballesteros S (2014), “Video game training enhances cognition of older adults: A meta-analytic study”, Psychology and Aging 29(3): 706–716. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037507 ↩

7. US Federal Trade Commission, “Lumosity to Pay $2 Million to Settle FTC Deceptive Advertising Charges for Its ‘Brain Training’ Program”, press release, January 5, 2016. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2016/01/lumosity-pay-2-million-settle-ftc-deceptive-advertising-charges-its-brain-training-program ↩ ↩²

8. Egami H, Rahman MS, Yamamoto T, Egami C, Wakabayashi T (2024), “Causal effect of video gaming on mental well-being in Japan 2020–2022”, Nature Human Behaviour 8(10): 1943–1956. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01948-y ↩ ↩² ↩³

9. Vuorre M, Johannes N, Magnusson K, Przybylski AK (2022), “Time spent playing video games is unlikely to impact well-being”, Royal Society Open Science 9(7): 220411. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.220411 ↩

10. World Health Organization, “Addictive behaviours: Gaming disorder”, questions and answers, checked October 31, 2026. https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/addictive-behaviours-gaming-disorder ↩ ↩²

11. Stevens MW, Dorstyn D, Delfabbro PH, King DL (2021), “Global prevalence of gaming disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis”, Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 55(6): 553–568. https://doi.org/10.1177/0004867420962851 ↩