SIO363: Study Shows Video Games Are Good! See Mom, I Told You

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:16 Thomas: Hello and welcome Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 363, I'm Thomas, and I'm excited to talk video games today. This was pretty timely. Tears of the Kingdom came out, what, a week ago or something? Yeah, no, that's about right, week ago. I wouldn't know because I haven't got to play it. I barely played it, but this is great because today's episode is about video games.

I, if you're anything like me, you've probably played games your whole life, and you know, my, I know my, my listenership is pretty nerdy, like I am, and I'm sure that you heard a lot of crap about your video game playing, if you're anything like me, again, from your parents or from your teachers or whatever. Feel like there's been nothing but negative talk around video games for such a long time. So that's why when saw this study come out that showed positive effects of video games, for once, it seems like, NIH study examines the impact of video games on the brains of elementary students and says maybe they do good things. I thought, that's perfect, let's cover that. And also, coordination with that, wanted to announce that. Lydia and I streamed some Zelda, and that means I play Zelda and Lydia hangs out and we talk about stuff. It's a lot of fun.

Lydia is not a gamer whatsoever, but you know, we'll see. Maybe I'll get her to try to play it a little bit, I don't know, just for fun, just for, just for shits, but yeah, if you follow me on any social media you might have seen that we streamed once, and I wanted to say that, uh, sort of to go along with this episode, today we're going to stream tomorrow.

We're gonna set a time and actually tell the podcast listeners, so maybe you folks have a chance to join us. It was a lot of fun. Here's the thing about Tears of the Kingdom, them.

0:01:58 Thomas: Was so anticipating it. I got all ready. I pre-downloaded it, did all the stuff. And then I realized I don't have any time. So I played, you know, 30 minutes of it. And then I played that one stream with Lydia, which was, it was a lot of fun, but when I'm streaming and we're hanging out, we're chatting, I don't get like a lot of progress done on the video game, but it was still funny. I think we had some good jokes and stuff. And so, unlike what I'm guessing is 80% of you folks, I haven't gotten to play a whole lot of Tears of the Kingdom, but what I have played has been fucking amazing. It's, it's so cool, I love the game. And so anyway, the point of this is that, as you are listening, possibly, I don't know why I just said that, I don't, when you're listening, but as this is coming out Thursday, May 18th, Lydia, Lydia and I are going to jump on the Twitch stream.

0:02:44 Thomas: That is twitch.tv slash SRS NES, twitch.tv slash SRSNES. I'll put it in the show notes. We're going to come on at 2 p.m. Pacific. Play some Zelda, hang out. No spoilers, by the way. I don't like to look anything up. I try to play my Zeldas without looking anything up until, you know, if I have to, but don't. Spoilers will be booted. No spoiling. Just hang out. It'll be so much fun. It was fun last time. Once again, twitch.tv slash SRSNES. Today, Thursday, May 18th, at 2 p.m. Pacific. I suppose 5 Eastern. Come hang. And you could probably still watch the last stream too if you wanted to before then, the previous season. Anyway, you're doing that, and while we're doing, doing that, we can rest assured that the, the, uh, video game is probably not rotting my brain. Well, we'll see, I, I'll see once I talk to Dr. Bader Chaarani. He tells us more about this study that found positive effects for video games. Let's talk about what it found, what it didn't find. And by the way, stick around, because toward, toward the end of the episode, Dr.

0:03:42 Thomas: Chaarani has some teasers, essentially like tips his hand a little bit on the next study that gives us a preview of the data. I didn't even know this was coming. It was super cool. And that study is going to be even more fascinating, might make even more waves. So make sure to listen all the way to the end. And so with that said, let's hop on over to the interview with Dr. Bader Chaarani on video games and them not being full of demons and causing your kids brains to rot, I think, is the name of this. That's official name of the National Institute of Health Study, I believe. I'm not going to look it up. All right, let'S GO!

0:04:23 Thomas: Dr. Chaarani, thank you so much for joining us.

0:04:26 Bader: Sure. Thank you for having me.

0:04:27 Thomas: We're going to talk about a video game study, and it's not about how demons or Satan is getting through the kids through video games. It's not that kind. Kind.

0:04:38 Bader: That kind. No.

0:04:39 Thomas: Oh, good. Okay. Because historically, I feel like that's been kind of where this has gone. Those fears about video games. Tell us a little bit about how you got into this. What Like, led you here?

0:04:46 Bader: Yeah. Yeah, sure. So I am assistant professor at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Vermont. And I've been a video gamer since I was a kid. I love video gaming. And

0:05:02 Thomas: Right. We'll have to stop there and tell me what your favorite video games are. Let's talk video games!

0:05:04 Bader: Yep. I have a lot of favorite video games. But the one, if I had to pick, it's going to be between Witcher, God of War, and maybe Elden Ring.

0:05:17 Thomas: Oh, yeah. I want to play Elden Ring so badly, but I feel it's one of those things that but if I do, it'll become my new full-time job. So I just like someday it'll be, the year will be 2050 and I'll be like, I'm ready. I'm already to do it.

0:05:20 Bader: Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah, It is one of those games that you can finish in like 30 hours or 130 hours.

0:05:39 Thomas: Yeah, that one looks so cool. I interrupted. So we've talked video games, carry on, please.

0:05:39 Bader: Yeah, So um, I joined the lab in Vermont and to do basically research, and we, we started collecting data as part of a large national, national multi-site project called the ABCD study. And one of the behavioral measures that we collected is video gaming. So it was very natural for me to have interest. As something you said at the beginning, we hear a lot of studies saying that video gamers are less smart than non-video, video gamers, or they have mental problems or cognitive problems. And based on myself first and the community of gamers that I know, I don't agree with these papers that have relatively small sample sizes. Yes, our project had about 10,000 kids. Kids. So the study that we did is the largest that looked at video gaming and brain and cognition.

0:06:40 Thomas: Right, right. Yeah. And also there's always been those ones about like video games linked to violence and that kind of thing. It does feel like most of the studies that I, at least I've heard of, they always tend to be negative. It feels like it's people, that was kind of why I was joking in the beginning, it feels like it's people trying to find a reason why kids shouldn't be playing video games. That's fair to say.

0:06:57 Bader: Yeah. Yeah, it is fair to say the I'd say the majority of papers on video gaming tend to be negative. The media likes to focus much more on the negatives of video gaming gaming for some reason, there is quite a few papers showing benefits of video gaming. But you never hear the media lights on them. I don't know why. Yeah.

0:07:18 Thomas: Yeah.

0:07:39 Thomas: Yeah, it's just such probably an easy headline to sell for concerned parents or something. But so it sounded like you were saying the study was already happening or the surveying was already happening and you were just kind of taking advantage of it or something? Can you kind of of explain just sort of mechanically what's going on there.

0:07:43 Bader: Right.

0:07:57 Bader: Yeah, sure. So what I meant is that this project is already being collected. So again, this is part of the ABCD study. Study. So we collect data every year.

0:08:07 Thomas: Okay, what's the ABC? That's what I don't understand. What's the A, B, C, D study?

0:08:11 Bader: Yeah, the ABCD study is the largest neuroimaging and behavioral study in children in the US so far with over 12,000 children that we track every year, we collect imaging data, behavioral data, mental Health, cognition, really, really a big database. And video gaming and screen time in general is one of these data that we collect.

0:08:26 Thomas: Oh, wow.

0:08:38 Thomas: So, it sounds Like there are probably I imagine a lot of things people might use this data for a lot Of things to study. Are there any, any other notable things people are doing with this data before we dig into your study?

0:08:50 Bader: Totally, there's maybe thousands of researchers that are using the data since this is open, it's have open access to the data, it's free to the public. Public, everyone can request access to it. This is actually an NIH study, and all the data is uploaded to a public server. So yeah, we have researchers from China, Japan, really all over the world doing really cool stuff with this data.

0:08:55 Thomas: Mm hmm. Oh, Wow.

0:09:21 Thomas: Yeah, no kidding. Kidding. Oh, wow, that's way more than I even thought. Okay, so it is, yeah, I was going to say it's like, you know, you got a big telescope and people want to go look in the telescope and study the sky, but it's more like everybody can. It's massive, everybody can get a turn on the telescope because it's public. That's really cool.

0:09:36 Bader: Exactly, exactly. Maybe one of the advantages is that here at University of Vermont, we do the processing. We are a collection site and we do the processing of the functional imaging data. So we kind of have a privileged access to the imaging and we are more familiar than than a researcher who has never worked with this database before.

0:09:57 Thomas: Gotcha.

0:10:06 Thomas: So, you mentioned before there's studies about this that are positive that maybe we just haven't heard of. Do you want to go into any of those or mention any of Those first or would it be better to go into yours?

0:10:15 Bader: Yeah, there's a few studies. Again, I would like to underline that they all used relatively small samples. So about 400 kids, that was the largest study, I think a 2013 study study that showed that video gamers have more cognitive skills related to attention. That was the strongest good or beneficial finding in the literature so far. Other studies also showed advantages in video gamers when they do some memory tests, some reading and listening tests compared to non-videogamers.

0:11:01 Bader: And then, obviously, you have the majority on the opposite side, papers showing links with depression, aggressive behavior. Yeah, I think you know the story here.

0:11:13 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And I can never, I'm sure we'll get into it with your study, but I never know if we're talking causation or correlation or how, you know, if we'RE establishing, is it the kind of people who are more drawn to video games already? Or is it that the video games are actually doing something? I imagine that's kind of hard to tease apart.

0:11:16 Bader: Yep. Yep. Right, so the majority were cross-sectional studies. So we're talking associations, not causation. Sure.

0:11:38 Thomas: Well, let's dig into yours. So let's talk, let's talk methods. Let's talk results. Let's talk everything. Feel free to get into the, the nitty gritty details.

0:11:44 Bader: Yep. Right. So in the study that we published back in October, we included about 2,000 kids. About 1,200 were never video gamers, so kids who reported playing zero hours per week. And on the other hand, we included video gamers who play three or more hours per week. They were about 800, depending on the measures that we tested them on. We looked at mainly three variables. The first is cognition, mental health, and brain imaging. And to summarize our findings a brief statement, I'd say we saw that video gamers showed higher when they do two tasks related to attention, inhibitory control, and another task related to working memory. So they did better than the non-video gamers, gamers. And in parallel, we were seeing changes in the brain happened in key areas of the cortex involved in attention, visual memory, working memory, and focus, that kind of nicely completed the cognitive performance improvement in gamers.

0:12:49 Thomas: Can Can you remind me the the ages again of the kids you look at? Okay.

0:13:16 Bader: Absolutely. So in the ABCD study, we start collecting data on children that are ages nine and ten, so this is the baseline assessment of the the ABCD study.

0:13:24 Thomas: Yeah. Cuz I was just, I, curious, because it sounds like you're saying there's... there's actual brain, I don't know, structural changes you're observing change Okay, gotcha.

0:13:35 Bader: It's functional changes. We haven't looked at structure yet. That's definitely something we're going to do next.

0:13:38 Thomas: Oh. Okay, I misunderstood. Um, first off, I pour one out for these kids that are playing zero hours of video games a week. I feel really bad. Those kids, can we, can we help them somehow? Can we get them video games, or is that not allowed? We're not allowed to intervene? Ah.

0:13:57 Bader: We are, well, it's too late. They're already, at this point, 14 and 15. I suspect some of them are playing. I hope, I mean. I hope so.

0:14:01 Thomas: Yeah. We'll Do, we'll have to hope that they they found the light But, uh, yeah, well, this is interesting. So I, I have ADHD and I've always thought of video games is not really particularly well, no, now they think about it, I do, I do tend to, I tend to prefer games, like it does pull me in. They pull me and actually focus me on one thing. That's kind of curious. I know, you know, there's obviously a lot there in terms of what's going on with focus. But what you mean? Like what kind of, what were the measures? Do you want to describe them? It's always interesting to hear what these kind of measures and tests were that they did better on.

0:14:10 Bader: Yeah. Right. Right. Okay. Yep.

0:14:46 Bader: So the first test measures the response time. So, and this task is called the stop signal task, where the children inside the scanner, they see a screen and an arrow going left or right, and they are instructed to press the left or or right button as fast as they can. However, at some specific intervals, they see an up arrow. And we instruct them to inhibit their response when they see this arrow. And then we measure their success rate, how fast they responded. And video gamers in this task, they responded faster than non-video gamers. And they did a better job to inhibit their response?

0:15:22 Thomas: It sort of sounds like you had them play a video game though. Does is there any worry that it's like, OK, we just showed that kids who play video games are better at video games? Or do you think there's enough of kind of a distinction?

0:15:49 Bader: Yeah, that's a very, very good question. And I would say one of the limitations of this study, because we did look at other tasks outside of the scanner that do not involve any eye, hand, or motor coordination, and we did not see improvements. Improvements. But again, they are slightly different tasks. They're more related to reading and listening. But that's a very, very good question.

0:16:08 Thomas: Hmm. Hmm. Oh, OK. Gotcha. Yeah. So more to be determined, I guess, maybe. I imagine there's a lot of areas that you're going to say you want to want to look into more and do more studying, that's just the nature of science, right? Being a being a scientist. Yeah. So you have information as to how long any of these individual kids had been video gamers? Did you have any like historical data on that?

0:16:23 Bader: Right. Right?

0:16:44 Bader: We don't have historical data. We asked them to answer to the best of their knowledge, knowledge, um, how much they video game or used to video game, um, every, uh, how many hours per weekend day and per weekday, we don't have, um, any idea of their history, but again they're nine

0:17:06 Thomas: Oh, so you didn't ask him like, oh, when you were eight or when you are, you know, another age, there's none of that data.

0:17:08 Bader: Yeah well yeah I mean the answer should be we try to ask them to give us their kind of average and since they are nine and ten years old, um, I suspect they have a large history because, again, um, the, a big number of children our sample are never video gamers, um yeah, so I, I suspect it's like a, but this is again a very good point, um, that we can't accurately for in the database.

0:17:19 Thomas: Oh okay right oh Was I was just wondering If there's going to Be like a strength of Effect you could look at for you know if kids have been playing longer versus shorter but sounds like with this Data that's not really something that you could evaluate.

0:17:55 Bader: Yeah. For now, however, we already have three data points and in my future study, I'm definitely interested in looking at the practice effect, see if there's any practice effect in these children.

0:18:10 Thomas: Oh, like you can look at the same children over time?

0:18:14 Bader: Yeah, so since we have many children who are never gamers at 9 and 10 years old, and we know that some of them start playing, so we can kind of see any practice effect that happens over time, because we know that they have never played in their life before.

0:18:38 Thomas: Oh, so is the... And sorry, just probably basic stuff I don't understand. Is this ABCD study going to continue with the same kids for a while?

0:18:45 Bader: Yeah, so the ABCD study will track these kids for about 10 years. So we're tracking them from 9 to 10 and 10 years old until 19 and 20 years old.

0:18:51 Thomas: Oh wow. How do they get those?

0:18:59 Bader: This is, yeah, this is one of the biggest grants in the US and it regroups the elites in science, science. And yeah, we have many people, many research assistants that are involved in collecting this data and making sure the children are interested to come back to us. And, yeah, it's not, it's quite challenging, but our return, I think the children love being involved, involved in this study, and the parents as well.

0:19:35 Thomas: That wonder if there's like a selection effect of who's going to be able to stick around that long or anything like that. Is there anything that you worry about there in terms of, you know, who's going to stick about doing this kind of thing?

0:19:36 Bader: Um, As for now, I, I don't think, um, we have this challenge. Um, however, we, we are obviously losing some, a very small percent of participants every year, but it's not at a stage where we worry, worry much about any, uh, like confounding effect.

0:20:07 Thomas: Okay. So wait, is this relatively new then? Or I thought you were talking like this is something that they've been, this ABCD thing is something that's been going on for a while. Is it newer?

0:20:16 Bader: Data collection, if I remember, it started in 2016. And yeah, that's why at this stage the kids are 14 and 15 years old.

0:20:21 Thomas: Oh, okay. Got it. Okay. So let's see. Did we go through all the positives yet, or, did we, you just give me a few of them?

0:20:35 Bader: Went through over the majority, the main findings of the study. You can consider that, for example, no differences in BMI. Is worth mentioning.

0:20:45 Thomas: That's Interesting, yeah.

0:20:46 Bader: That's one thing that many papers showing negative outcomes of video gaming showed. And we're not seeing that. We're not saying any significant differences in BMI, for example, or IQ.

0:20:47 Thomas: Oh.

0:21:04 Thomas: Do they also evaluate IQ?

0:21:05 Bader: Yeah, we looked at IQ. There are some papers showing showing that video gamers are less smart than non-video gamers. We are not seeing that at all.

0:21:13 Thomas: Geez, yeah. Was I didn't know, uh, I wasn't under the impression, I guess, just casually that I thought IQ tests were kind of out of, not, not in vogue anymore. Is that something that is still done and it's still like a reliable kind measure?

0:21:29 Bader: Yeah, so there are two main instruments according to the NIH. They measure crystallized and fluid IQ. They are still considered reliable and I I think, the main IQ measures that everyone believes.

0:21:45 Thomas: It sounds like these kids have to go through a lot for this survey. How long does it take them to collect this data? All

0:21:52 Bader: So I don't know exactly about how long to collect all the variables. But I know that the MRI scan alone takes about an hour to an hour 30. So yeah, it's quite a long, long one.

0:22:01 Thomas: Right. I hope these kids are getting ice cream cones or something.

0:22:10 Thomas: That's a lot of time for a kid.

0:22:12 Bader: Yeah, well, some of the MRI tasks tasks allow them to win money it's like a reward processing task and we try to do it at the at the last to keep them excited for it and it works that's

0:22:17 Thomas: Oh, okay.

0:22:28 Thomas: Yeah, apparently. That is interesting. No BMI difference. I wouldn't have thought there would be any IQ difference. I didn't know that was something that people believed. I don't know. My impression is a lot lot of gamers are very smart and and these days it feels like so many people are gamers uh and you know you got app games you got like you know there's lots of different ways to be a gamer now that maybe in the past there weren't that starts to it starts to feel like the distinction between gamer and non-gamer is maybe even becoming less and less meaningful, what do you think?

0:23:01 Bader: Yeah, that's very, very true. That's why starting to look at these age ranges is very important, because this is really where you can get a pure non-videogamers sample. And then afterwards, I think everyone, like by the age 14, 15, I'm sure we're going to have a hard time to find a non-video gamer. Because as you're saying, games are everywhere right now.

0:23:31 Thomas: But I suppose you may be able to study, like, you, how many hours per week and correlate with, with, like, you people are playing 20 hours a week versus people playing five hours a week.

0:23:39 Bader: Right. Yeah, that's what actually the adult studies, that what they do. They do correlations with the level of video gaming dollars.

0:23:41 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Yeah. So this is pretty cool. I mean? Oh, I meant to ask, if you could give us some idea of like the strength of the effect here

0:23:56 Bader: So we look at, for example, if you look at the odds ratio or the percent, we can definitely give a number. I could say video gamers perform 5% to 10% better. However, However, in terms of the tasks that we do, we cannot really translate this effect into anything that we can apply in a real life. Like I can't say that means they will have, I don't know, 20% higher grades in school. It's a little bit more complicated. Um, but yeah, as an absolute effect size, um, it's between five to ten percent better in video gamers, yeah.

0:24:40 Thomas: These like individual tasks that you had them do. Well, what about the negatives? Did you did you find any negatives? Did you repeat any of the bad findings that historically we've seen?

0:24:43 Bader: Correct, yep. So we, we had originally saw higher mental health symptoms in video gamers, and um, these symptoms were significantly higher in ADHD, depression and anxiety. So these three measures from the CBCL, which is a mental health questionnaire for children, they were higher in video gamers. However, none of these measures reaches a clinical significance. So we can't say that children these have clinical ADHD. They only have higher symptom scores, but they cannot be considered as children with ADHD or depression. That's something we're going to be monitoring in the next, we're gonna be studying actually in the next papers.

0:25:29 Thomas: Hmm.

0:25:46 Thomas: Oh, I, yeah, I'm not sure I'm understanding. Are you saying none of them have ADHD or just the difference based on video gaming isn't enough to amount to ADHD? I'm not sure. I understood that none

0:25:57 Bader: Correct. So They have higher scores for ADHD. However, even with this higher score than non-videogamers, they are are not clinically considered as children with ADHD.

0:26:12 Thomas: Of them that you didn't, they, you didn'T get a single child that has ADHD in the group. That doesn't just

0:26:16 Bader: No, no, I'm talking about the average, the average um, sample, yeah, yes, yeah,

0:26:19 Thomas: The, okay. Okay. I see. So the average, the difference you're saying, if you took the average video gamer and the average not video video gamer, even though the, the, yeah, the effects are a little higher. The symptoms are a little high. It's not enough to say to where you would say the average gamer has ADHD. Yeah, that makes sense. That'd be pretty extreme if it was.

0:26:37 Bader: And generally in in in the whole sample, at nine and ten years old, you don't get a lot of children that um clinically clinically are classified as ADH. I think it's less than 10% of the total ABCD sample.

0:26:54 Thomas: So what do you make of that? I mean, is there any way again to tease apart if that's causal or if it's, you know, just happens to be the kinds of kids who are, who like video games or maybe who play because of what's going on at home or anything like that?

0:27:03 Bader: Yep. Yeah. So with only one data point, which is the baseline assessment of the ABCD study, we cannot use causal models. I mean, we can, but it's just wrong to use causal puzzle models with only one data point. So as I was saying before, in our next paper, we're going to have three or maybe four data points. And then we're gonna start looking into causality. So we want to move from associations and try to find answers to your exact questions. We want to know, we gonna have more mental health data. Data, twin data. We have a big part of the ABC study that includes twins.

0:27:54 Thomas: Oh, wow. I bet they're royalty in terms of, they're MVPs in terms of your study subjects.

0:28:05 Bader: And And we have twins where one of the twins doesn't play video games, and the other is a hardcore video gamers. So that's going to be amazing to look at. Yeah.

0:28:13 Thomas: Yeah. It makes sense. You can't really look causally with one data point, but can't, I imagine you can, or you already have when you're giving me these numbers um separated like isolated gaming as the variable right

0:28:30 Bader: Of. So in our analysis, we did correct for covariates or nuisance covariates. And that's to tease out any confounding effect from covariates that are are like sex or covariates from like other screen media forms, like watching TV or texting or being on the internet. And the effects that are, we don't call them effects because we're not really doing causal models. If we're doing a regression, then it is a correlation coefficient. Efficient. So I always avoid using effect. And I would say association. So we can say, yeah, video gaming is associated with higher depression symptoms in children.

0:28:38 Thomas: Right. Hmm. Right. Yeah.

0:29:12 Thomas: Gotcha. Gotcha. Makes sense. So associated, I guess I was just wondering if there's the possibility that that association is more significant because of like something else, home you situation, divorce, whatever it might be, or if it's just, it's kind of isolated down to where the association you're talking about is just video games is the, is the main variable there.

0:29:38 Bader: So that's, again, very interesting. But we haven't tested it in this study.

0:29:43 Thomas: Right. Okay. Okay. So there's, but is there that data in the data set, or it's just you haven't looked at it, like in terms of home, home life kind of stuff?

0:29:52 Bader: Is definitely in the data set. And that's something that we, the, the, fun part of this data set is it's so huge, so you need, we need to really make strategic decisions on what covariates we include because at some point we end up overfitting our model or making the results more complicated than necessary, necessary. We already correct for over 60 variables in our analysis. So sometimes adding more variables doesn't necessarily the model. But for a specific question like yours, hours, it definitely makes sense. However, the focus here was more on general benefits or associations of video gaming with cognition and mental health and the brain. But if you are doing a specific study looking at video gaming and mental house, would definitely, definitely controlled for the covariance that you mentioned, I

0:30:01 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Oh, I see. Yeah. Hmm.

0:30:56 Thomas: Gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, well, is there anything else about the, I won't say effects I guess, but the results, the associations that you want to, um, cover that you haven't covered already?

0:31:07 Bader: Think, we, we did a good summary of the the findings, um, one thing maybe that is worth mentioning is that we did actually run extra analysis, um, just to kind of tease out, um, kind of related to our previous point, um, to tease out the screen media effects or potential effects, because we noticed that TV watching is highly correlated with video gaming. And that was a problem because that could mean that everything we're seeing is probably because of watching TV.

0:31:38 Thomas: Oh yeah. Yeah.

0:31:46 Bader: And you can't make any conclusions based on that. That. So we ran extra models mainly to tease out the association or to regress out any potential effect of TV watching. And we still saw the same results. So that was very, very good to see.

0:32:06 Thomas: Yeah, that's interesting. I guess it wouldn't totally make sense that some of those, tests that you would get better at them from just watching TV, but I guess some of the other stuff you want to look at, you know, the mental health stuff that might, yeah, that makes sense that it it would be hard to determine. Um, so that's interesting. Well, uh, I'm curious, how has this been received? Is it something that, know, has gotten attention or,

0:32:14 Bader: Yeah. Right. Yeah, we got an overwhelming number of media outlets and TV reporters and journalists about the paper. And I did about, I don't know, 15 to 20 interviews. The people were really interested. We got really kind of viral in Japan, as you know, the gaming industry. Industry. So I often see my name mentioned in a tweet in Japanese.

0:32:48 Thomas: Yeah. And you just hope they're saying nice things.

0:33:02 Bader: Got a lot of attention in Europe. We were on the Trevor Noah show, I think.

0:33:11 Thomas: Oh, oh, okay. I didn't know that. That's, that's cool.

0:33:14 Bader: Yeah, he made a joke citing our paper. So yeah, I thing we got a lot of attention. Yeah. I think the paper paper is ranked in the top less than 1% in terms of attention for all the papers ever published in history. So I think it's a topic that is really interesting, especially for parents. And the goal, why we're doing these additional studies is to hope to inform policymakers, obviously. And that's the reason we need these these causal models, maybe I can give you a sneak peek of what we're finding so far, because I am impressed, um, by the the new results that I'm having, which show even better benefits. And this is in terms of, um, maybe I can give you one part, um, that is Because, yeah, so we're seeing that actually video gamers who play one to two hours per day, so not crazy amounts of, sorry, per week, not crazy amount of video gaming. So one to three hours per week. They have a significantly higher IQ than non-video gamers, and they still do much better on the cognitive tests and they have less mental health symptoms, um,

0:33:21 Thomas: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Oh, that'd be great.

0:34:33 Thomas: Interesting.

0:34:42 Thomas: And is that compared to are you saying like that's the sweet spot, like more? Oh, OK. So too much, you know, associated. And Is this still associations or is this getting into the causal stuff? Oh, that's exciting.

0:34:47 Bader: Exactly. So, Yep. We're getting here into the causal modeling, yeah. And, um, this is actually, um, it's always nice when you find something and then you read like an old paper or a theory in the literature and say, yeah, this is replicating this paper. So this theory about the sweet spot has been mentioned in a 10 years old paper.

0:35:16 Thomas: Oh, wow.

0:35:20 Bader: And in that paper, they were saying, we need large studies to confirm this hypothesis. So this is really, really nice to see. And I'm so excited to publish this paper very, very soon. Yeah,

0:35:33 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, that is exciting. Is it the kind of thing where, just off the top of my head, I can imagine if you are a kid and you are playing in that sweet spot one to two hours, that strikes me that there might be a lot of other things that are good going on with your life. You know, that strikes me that you might have good parents or you might have, you somebody is your schedule to be positive. You know? Like, there's a lot of control that parents have over their kids' schedule at that age. Could Is that be part of what's going on there? Or is it isolated enough that it's literally, no, it's the video game itself?

0:36:05 Bader: Is the video game itself.

0:36:07 Thomas: Oh, wow. That's so cool.

0:36:08 Bader: Yes. And like, there's no effect or whatsoever on kids who play, who do more physical activity or who spend more time outdoor versus indoor. Although it may sound controversial, but it is really the, I mean, I think it is related only to the gaming, gaming.

0:36:19 Thomas: Right.

0:36:32 Thomas: Wow. Yeah, that's really, I can't wait for this. So, wait, when do we get to look forward to this? When is this going to be ready?

0:36:32 Bader: Yeah. We're, we're kind of writing this paper right now, um, and I think it's gonna get even more attention than the the previous paper.

0:36:45 Thomas: I bet. Listen up, Trevor Noah. I hope he's going to cover this one, too. But I feel like sometimes these things can take a very, very long time. When do you think you'll be able to go back out on all the media circuit talking about this new study?

0:36:48 Bader: Hopefully In the next few months, I'd say or maybe maybe, yeah, it depends on, you know, the reviewing process of the paper, um, sometimes it takes two weeks, sometimes it takes six months, so it's really open-ended. Yeah.

0:37:04 Thomas: Oh, cool. Wow. Right. Gotcha. Well, that replaces my question because I was going to ask you, you know, and you've already mentioned the things you want to study in the future, but is there still, you maybe want to still go into that? Do you have any other, you ideas brewing or things that you're looking to study as a result of this, or like anything that you want want to look at.

0:37:34 Bader: Um, one of my main, I think, goals is to look at how video gaming genre can play a role here, and that's something unfortunately we don't have in the ABC data set.

0:37:42 Thomas: Oh yeah. Right. Yeah. I forgot to ask. I was going to, I was going to ask that. So it's just video gaming in general. That's as far detailed as the questions got or.

0:38:00 Bader: So there's two questionnaires, um, one is how many hours per week do kids play. And the other, they ask them if they play any mature-rated games. Like Assassin's Creed, GTA, Call of Duty, cetera. But we don't go into the type of games, which is really unfortunate. Yeah, that's something I really would love to look at.

0:38:11 Thomas: Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. That'd be cool to get that more detailed data. And then you'll have to be, you know, tell us which games are going to make our kids smartest. We'll have to see.

0:38:35 Bader: I mean, there are a lot of theories out there and there's already, you know, the apps that pretend or claim that, and they could be true. They claim that playing logic games can improve your brain powers or whatever, or playing Sudoku or So they already, There are already theories about that.

0:38:42 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I don't understand Minecraft currently, but everything I hear about it is like, I bet that's a smart kid game. I don't know.

0:39:00 Bader: Yeah.

0:39:09 Bader: It is. It's actually one of the least played games for 9 and 10 years old, according to, yeah, which is not surprising.

0:39:15 Thomas: Oh, really? I feel like it's So popular, though. Is it just with an older age, or something?

0:39:20 Bader: I think so, yeah. I think It's more for adolescents. Like, imagine even, yeah... If you imagine a kid who's 9 and 10 years old and you offer him, um, racing, or Call of Duty, or or Minecraft, um, I would never choose Minecraft, uh,

0:39:22 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, That's what I thought too. But then everybody, I know, I feel like their kids are into Minecraft, but that's just a anecdotal, I suppose. Yeah, that'll be really fascinating. I'm with, with my luck or our luck, it'll be, I don't know if you have kids, but it'll me some game that my kids hate and they don't want to play, and that'll be the smart one. I'm like, dang it, you need to play this game, good, I'll have to ground them until they start playing the right video games?

0:39:39 Bader: Yeah. Um, Pretty much, yeah, I Don't How Old are they? They're your Kids, okay.

0:40:03 Thomas: Oh, my kids are five, four, and newborn a essentially.

0:40:08 Bader: Congrats.

0:40:09 Thomas: So I've got some time to get, I'll be able to see the results of your study before I decide what game to force them to play. That'll be very useful. Well, that's super cool. Yeah. I can't wait for that. I really am looking forward to, I'm going to keep an eye out for this, new study that you say you're only a few months away from being able to talk about maybe. Maybe. So that's exciting.

0:40:11 Bader: Yep. Yeah, totally, totally.

0:40:28 Bader: Yeah. I'm looking forward to, I'm happy to share the news with you when we publish it and maybe chat again.

0:40:36 Thomas: Is there anything else you want to tell people about this or anything before we kind of sign off here?

0:40:41 Bader: I think my main conclusion is, I think for parents, don't be afraid of letting your children, if they want to play video games, or they present some benefits over just watching TV, for example. Yeah, of course, if the prefer doing physical activities, you're not going to force them to stay stay indoor and play video games. But at least for now, this data is saying that video gaming is better than or may have some advantages over other screen media forms.

0:41:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:41:21 Thomas: I got to get on that because all my kids do is watch Disney Plus. So I'm going to have to start getting them. I've tried to get there. They're not old enough yet. I gotta get them a little older to be able to play. Well, there's probably games for every age, really, but it's a little complicated. I tried with a couple games, games like Mario Kart, and they started off okay, and then they quickly were just like doing nothing and wanting to like go backwards and explore the world, just a bunch of stuff like that. It's still fun, but you know, it does get, I can't really play it with them anymore because it's like we can't ever finish a race. I just have to sit there, but maybe when they get older. That's cool, thank you so much for coming on, um, is there anything you want to point people to? Website, social media, anything? Or or just wait until we uh hear from you on this new study?

0:41:31 Bader: Yeah. Yeah. Right, right.

0:42:03 Bader: Yeah, I think the latter. I'll be able to publish the new study very, very soon. And again, this is an NIH-published study, so I think there's going to be an official coverage published by the NIH. So I'm sure it's going reach parents, they're going to see it.

0:42:24 Thomas: Excellent. Well, Dr. Chaarani, thank you so much for coming on, taking the time, and uh looking forward to speaking with you again.

0:42:31 Bader: It. Thanks for having me. That was so much fun.