Association Between Playing Video Games, General Health and Academic Performance of Fasa Mid-Schools Boy Students

Background: Nowadays, children and teenagers are heavily influenced by video games. Excessive video games may affect children's physical and mental health as well as academic performance. Objectives: The present study aimed at determining the correlation between playing video games and general health as well as academic performance of Fasa mid-schools boy students at Iranian secondary school level. Materials & Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out on 150 boy students at secondary school level in Fasa, Fars Province, Iran. The subjects were selected through multistage cluster random sampling method. The data were collected using a three-part questionnaire including demographic information, information about how to use video games. and General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). The collected data were analyzed by using SPSS22, descriptive statistics, correlation coefficient, t-test, and Chi-square test. P<0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: Findings revealed that there was a significant direct correlation between the amount of video game use and overall general health (r=0.25, P=0.03); a significant inverse relationship was also found between the amount of video game use and academic performance of the students in first (r=-0.41, P=0.002), second (r=-0.30, P=0.02) and third grade (r=-0.42, P=0.02) of mid school students. There was no significant difference in the general health between the two types of game played. There was also a significant relationship between students' academic performance categories and the type of video game (P<0.001). Conclusion: Based on the findings, it can be concluded that video games can play a crucial role in the general health and academic performance of students. Thus, it is vital that parents pay more attention to the duration of playing and type of games their children play.