Keep Your Gaming Under 10 Hours/Week — Here’s Why

Game On: Or off, depending on how much you currently play. New research out of Curtin University examined links between time spent video gaming and overall health, and findings suggest there’s a pretty clear threshold. Around 10 hours of gaming per week seems to be the tipping point at which health declines. 

The Study: In a survey of 317 students from five Australian universities, researchers categorized participants by how much they gamed each week: up to five hours, five to ten hours, or more than ten hours. The low- and moderate-gaming groups looked pretty similar health-wise. The heavy gamers, though, exhibited much poorer health habits. They tended to eat worse, sleep less, and have higher body weights and body fat percentages.

The Takeaway: Spending too much time gaming — in this case, more than 10 hours per week — is associated with poor health outcomes. If you love to game, you don’t have to quit, but take care of yourself, too.   

Keep in Mind: The median age of participants in this study was 20 years. This was intentional; the researchers wanted to survey individuals in a key habit-forming phase of life. But this also means the findings can’t be broadly applied to everyone across the lifespan.