RESEARCH NOTE
Do Video Games Count as Playing Together?
On the little evidence there is, yes. Two surveys link parents and teenagers playing video games together with feeling more connected. Neither shows that the playing caused it.
How much evidence there is
Two studies. Both asked teenagers and their parents questions at one point in time. Both come from the same university, Brigham Young University. We read the published summary of each, not the full paper.
That is a thin base for any firm statement about gaming. What follows is what those two summaries say and what they leave out.
Study one: 287 teenagers
The first study surveyed 287 adolescents and their parents, with reports from the child, the mother and the father (Journal of Adolescent Health, 2011).
Its summary reports two things.
- Behavior. In its words, "co-playing video games with parents was associated with decreased levels of internalizing and aggressive behaviors, and heightened prosocial behavior for girls only." Internalizing behaviors are problems turned inward, such as anxiety and low mood. Prosocial behavior means helping and kindness.
- Connection. Playing together "was also marginally related to parent-child connectedness for girls". Marginally is the summary's own word. It signals a weak result.
Read strictly, the family connection result is a weak one, and it is for girls only. The summary reports nothing for boys.
The paper's title begins "Game on... girls".
Study two: 453 teenagers
The second study surveyed 453 adolescents, average age about 14, and their parents (Family Relations, 2012). It looked at several kinds of family media use side by side.
The summary reports that "greater amounts of family cell phone use, coviewing of TV and movies, and coplaying of video games were associated with higher levels of family connection."
One kind of media use went the other way: "Conversely, engagement over social networking sites was related to lower levels of family connection, at least from the adolescent's perspective."
So in this sample video games sat with shared television, shared movies and phone contact. All of them went with more family connection. Social networking sites went with less, as the teenagers saw it.
What the summaries leave out
- How big the links are. The summary of the second study gives no figures for the size of the link. The first calls its connection result marginal.
- Which games, and how long. Neither summary says what was played or for how many hours.
- Younger children. Both samples are adolescents.
- Which came first. Both are surveys taken once. A parent and teenager who already get along are more likely to pick up controllers together. The surveys cannot tell that apart from the game bringing them closer.
There is also a concentration point. Both studies come from one university, and they share two authors. The link has not been tested by an independent group with a different method.
Where video games appear in the wider research
In the main body of family leisure research, video games show up as one example of ordinary time at home. They are not studied on their own.
A study of fathers and teenagers in 647 US families names "playing board games and video games together" among the regular home activities behind its main result, along with eating dinner together, hobbies, informal sports, yard activities and watching television together (Leisure Sciences, 2012). We read the summary of that study too.
So researchers in this field already treat a shared video game as family time of the everyday kind. The evidence for that kind of time is a small link with closeness and no proof of cause. Our page on family game night sets that out.
One study we could not open
Our search turned up one more journal article on parents playing video games with their children. The publisher's page would not open, so we have not read it and we do not rely on it here.
So, does it count?
On this evidence, a video game played together looks like other shared time at home. Where it was measured, it went with more connection, weakly, and in one study only for girls.
The evidence does not support a stronger claim in either direction.
- It does not show that gaming with a teenager builds a bond.
- It does not show that it harms one. In the sample of 453 teenagers, the kind of screen use that went with lower connection was social networking sites, and shared video games went the other way.
Both studies measured playing together. Neither summary says anything about a teenager playing alone while a parent is in the next room.
The full picture
This page covers one question. The whole verdict on the saying, with its history and every source, is in our research paper: A family that plays together stays together: is it true?