Gaming – It’s Not About How Much Teens Play
The amount of time young people spend playing video games is not enough to judge whether gaming is linked to cognitive difficulties. A new study of several thousand adolescents shows that gaming time and symptoms of Internet Gaming Disorder are associated with cognitive performance in opposite ways.
While dysregulated gaming – marked by loss of control, craving or continued play despite problems – was consistently linked to lower performance across cognitive tests, gaming time itself showed small positive associations with selected skills. Led by Karl Landsteiner University (KL Krems), the study helps explain why earlier research on gaming has often produced conflicting results. The findings suggest that the real issue is not simply “how much” young people play, but whether gaming remains controlled, varied and purposeful – or becomes compulsive and difficult to stop.
Research on video games has long struggled with a contradiction. Some studies link gaming to poorer school performance, sleep problems or psychosocial difficulties, while others report benefits for attention, spatial thinking or problem-solving. The new work argues that part of this confusion is methodological: many earlier studies have treated high engagement and gaming disorder as if they were the same thing. Researchers at the Division of Psychological Methodology at KL Krems therefore analysed both factors simultaneously, using validated cognitive and motor tests rather than relying only on brief self-report
Beyond Screen Time
“Gaming time alone is too limited as a stand-alone measure,” says Dr. David Willinger, MSc, Scientific Staff (PostDoc) at the Division of Psychological Methodology at KL Krems. “A teenager who plays with focus a complex strategy game for many hours does something very different from one who feels unable to stop playing despite negative consequences. Our study shows why research has to separate these user patterns more carefully.” This distinction is central to the study: the authors do not present gaming as either harmful or beneficial in general. Instead, they show that different forms of gaming behaviour can point in different cognitive directions.
The results were clear. Internet Gaming Disorder – a pattern involving symptoms such as loss of control, craving, deception or continued play despite problems – was associated with lower performance across all assessed cognitive domains. These included reasoning, visual-spatial ability, verbal ability, numerical ability and long-term memory. Those affected also made more errors when rapid decisions had to be made under cognitive performance pressure. In contrast, average daily gaming time showed modest but statistically significant positive associations with some cognitive domains when dysregulation was statistically controlled. This does not prove that gaming improves cognition, but it does show that heavy gaming should not automatically be interpreted as a cognitive risk marker.
The type of game also mattered. Strategy and role-playing games were more strongly associated with better reasoning and verbal skills, while shooter games showed the strongest association with Internet Gaming Disorder severity. The authors also looked beyond broad genre labels and analysed favourite game titles. This revealed important variation within genres: games with construction, planning or text-rich elements showed different cognitive associations from fast, action-oriented or continuously progressing titles.
A Method Matters
The study is especially relevant because of its methodological approach. The researchers used structural equation modelling to separate the effects of gaming time and Internet Gaming Disorder, while adjusting for age, gender, school type, game genres and favourite games. The adolescent sample included 3,854 participants aged 12 to 16. Cognitive performance was measured with a psychometrically validated test battery covering reasoning, verbal, numerical, visual-spatial and memory skills; motor and information-processing abilities were also assessed. This allowed the identification of independent associations that would be blurred if gaming were measured only as total screen time.
The findings fit closely with KL Krems’ research profile, which focuses on interdisciplinary fields with high relevance to health policy, including mental health and neuroscience. By showing that digital media research must move beyond simple screen-time measures, the study offers a more precise basis for education, prevention and clinical assessment.
Original publication: The tug-of-war between engagement and dysregulation: A comprehensive analysis of cognition and internet gaming disorder in adolescents, D. Willinger, S. Wunderl & S. Stieger, Computers in Human Behavior 182 (2026) 109025, doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2026.109025. https://kris.kl.ac.at/en/publications/the-tug-of-war-between-engagement-and-dysregulation-a-comprehensi/
More on KL Krems research: https://www.kl.ac.at/en/research/research-blog
