Did a younger sibling or cousin get a Nintendo Switch 2 for Christmas this year?
Young adults feeling stressed or burned out might want to hop on and play a few rounds, a new study says.
Popular video games like those in the Super Mario Bros. or Yoshi series can offer meaningful emotional benefits for young adults, mainly by evoking a sense of childhood wonder, researchers reported.
“This study suggests that the path to combating burnout in young adults may lie not just in traditional wellness but also in reclaiming joy,” said senior researcher Andreas Eisingerich, a professor with Imperial College London in the U.K.
“Games like Super Mario Bros. and Yoshi may offer a potent antidote to the cynicism and fatigue characteristic of burnout," he said in a news release.
For the new study, researchers first interviewed 41 university students who’d played Super Mario Bros. or Yoshi games, to see what they got out of the experience.
Many said the games offered a refreshing break from academic pressure and the constant demands of today’s “always-on” digital culture.
Researchers then surveyed 336 other video game players to test the insights obtained from the round of interviews.
The survey confirmed that those who felt greater childlike wonder while playing also reported higher overall happiness, and in turn, those happier players had a significantly lower risk of burnout.
“Participants frequently described the bright colors and optimistic tone of Super Mario Bros. Wonder as evoking feelings of calm and childlike joy,” researchers wrote, citing one of the most recent games in the series.
“Interviewees often described Yoshi’s Crafted World as a warm, inviting environment that felt comforting and safe,” researchers added.
They concluded that happiness fully explained — rather than simply contributed to — the link between video gamers’ childlike wonder and burnout reduction.
“This study was among the first to identify childlike wonder as an emotional pathway through which mainstream video games could enhance well-being and reduce burnout,” researchers wrote in their paper, which appears in the journal JMIR Serious Games.