How video games reduce anxiety

Video games are often maligned as addictive, but as this short from the University of California explains, they offer at least one benefit – reducing anxiety. The video details an experiment by Kate Sweeny, a professor of psychology at UC Riverside, in which college students played video games while waiting to (supposedly) receive an assessment of their looks by their peers. In this state of slightly elevated anxiety and uncertainty, the students then played video games at different difficulty levels. Hitting a sweet spot between too easy and too difficult put the students in a flow state, dampening their worries as they lost themselves in the game. Pairing a brief history of the concept of flow with a rundown of Sweeny’s study, the short makes for a fascinating glimpse into the intersection of attention and anxiety.