Introduction
Video games are becoming more popular, with an estimated 3 billion gamers worldwide (Clement, 2022), and thanks to cloud gaming, video gaming is even more accessible than ever before. However, as digital devices are becoming more omnipresent, and as they become more of a replacement for face-to-face interactions (Harley, 2022), we must consider how video games impact wellbeing and social functioning. It is especially paramount to consider multidimensional wellbeing, as most of research on this matter appears to have focussed on psychological wellbeing only, discounting external influences on wellbeing like social circles, employment or finances.
Research questions
Existing research struggles to answer this debate uniformly. There are uncertainties over which wellbeing dimensions are influenced by gaming, whether effects are temporal or behavioural, whether they are short-term or long-term, and how they translate onto changes in players’ everyday lives. In line with the following gaps, we formed research questions that we want to tackle:
RQ1: Can video game player wellbeing be considered multidimensional, comprising social functioning, mental health, physical health and life circumstances?
RQ2: What impact does short-term and long-term video gameplay have on multidimensional wellbeing?
RQ3: Is there a link between player multidimensional wellbeing and video game addiction?
The plan: how do we answer these questions?
To answer the above research questions, we devised a four-stage plan for the PhD thesis:
Stage 1: Construction and validation of a player multidimensional wellbeing scale (PMDWell) (Olejarnik & Romano, 2025).
Stage 2: Cross-sectional and longitudinal of multidimensional wellbeing and video game engagement.
Stage 3: National-level analysis of adolescent video game engagement and lifelong wellbeing outcomes.
Stage 4: Semi-structured interviews - why people play video games, what they think wellbeing is, and how/why it is affected by video game engagement
Clement, J. (2022). Number of video game users worldwide from 2017 to 2027. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/748044/number-video-gamers-world/
Harley, D. (2022). Mindfulness in a Digital World. (1 ed.) (Palgrave Studies in Cyberpsychology). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19407-8
Olejarnik S. Z., & Romano, D. (2023) Is playing violent video games a risk factor for aggressive behaviour? Adding narcissism, self-esteem and PEGI ratings to the debate. Front. Psychol. 14:1155807. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1155807
Olejarnik, S. Z., & Romano, D. (2025). The PMDWell Framework: A Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Video Game Players’ Wellbeing. Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 100806. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2025.100806
Belin, R., Simmonds-Buckley, M., Romano, D., Olejarnik, S., Johnstone, R., Day, P., Kellett, S. (2026). Testing the impact of hoarded clutter on executive function: an experiment conducted in virtual reality. [Under review]
Olejarnik, S. Z., & Romano, D. (2026). Video games and multidimensional wellbeing: age-related differences in social functioning and addiction mechanisms in console and PC gamers. [Under review]
Olejarnik, S.Z., & Romano, D. (2026). Cross-sectional and prospective associations between video game engagement and wellbeing outcomes: perspectives from the UK Longitudinal Household Survey. [Monograph]
Olejarnik, S.Z., & Romano, D. (2026). Long-term associations between video game engagement and multidimensional wellbeing: 3-month and 6-month follow-up. [In progress]
Olejarnik, S.Z., Romano, D. M., & Bergin, A. (2027). Why video games matter? Thematic analysis of the impacts of video gameplay on multidimensional wellbeing. [In progress]
This author is supported by the Horizon Centre for Doctoral Training at the University of Nottingham (UKRI Grant No. EP/S023305/1).