Game Faces: How Digital Play Affects the Psychological Landscape of Youth.

The use of video games in children and adolescents has been growing since the invention of home interactive entertainment. With that growth, many parents and mental health professionals alike have questioned the impact on the mental well-being of their children and patients. Using current literature, we shall investigate the impact of video gaming on children's and teenagers' mental health in this systemic review. We will investigate time spent playing video games and the development of behavioral disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), depression, anxiety, and general psychological well-being. A search of PubMed and EBSCO discovery host was done, looking for primary peer-reviewed articles on the mental health outcomes of video gaming in the pediatric population (2-18 years old) of North America with no prior mental health diagnosis. The search returned 713 articles. After screening and selection, nine articles on six distinct studies were included. Overall, increased time spent playing video games was linked to increased depression and OCD symptoms, behavioral disorders, and suicidal ideation. This is a multifactorial issue that lacks substantial research in the current literature, leaving an opportunity for expansion on this topic in the future.