Association Between Esports Participation and Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
Di Tang, Jinde Liu, Pengpeng Gou, Xin Zhang, Chang Liu, Ruisi Ma, Jie Feng, Sara Xiao, Thomas Yuen Tung Lam · 2026
Read Association Between Esports Participation and Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis by Di Tang, Jinde Liu, Pengpeng Gou, Xin Zhang, Chang Liu, Ruisi Ma, Jie Feng, Sara Xiao, Thomas Yuen Tung Lam (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13421603.txt.
Description
Di Tang leads a nine-author systematic review, published in 2026, asking whether taking part in esports helps or harms health. Public debate often lumps competitive gaming together with ordinary video gaming, and earlier findings conflict, so the team set out to compare esports participants with non-participants directly.
Searching seven databases to May 2026, they gathered 53 studies covering 86,652 people, with 36 feeding meta-analyses. At first pass, participants and non-participants did not differ significantly on physical activity, body mass index, sleep, anxiety, depression, stress or grip strength. Careful sensitivity analysis then revealed slightly lower depression among esports participants. Subgroup checks separated professionals from amateurs. The authors call the overall health picture more neutral than popular concern suggests.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Di Tang, Jinde Liu, Pengpeng Gou, Xin Zhang, Chang Liu, Ruisi Ma, Jie Feng, Sara Xiao, Thomas Yuen Tung Lam |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 91 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |