Can Online Games Help Solve The Male Loneliness Epidemic?

As more men struggle with feelings of isolation and depression, some are finding much-needed support and community within the online gaming space, a Texas A&M University researcher has found.

According to Dr. Tyler Prochnow, an assistant professor with the Texas A&M School of Public Health, a key component of the nation’s ongoing loneliness epidemic is the decline of so-called “third places” — spaces outside of home, school and work where people can meet and connect. Traditionally, these have included businesses like coffee shops and diners, as well as churches, libraries and community centers, all of which were impacted greatly by the COVID-19 pandemic. Survey data shows that widespread feelings of social isolation actually predate the pandemic, with half of U.S. adults reporting at least some amount of loneliness prior to 2020. As other scholars have observed, men often bear the brunt of this growing lack of social connectedness, as lingering stigma discourages many from seeking help for feelings of loneliness and depression.

“Research has shown over the last 20 years that men’s close friendships have been declining — the amount of friends and the quality of friendships,” Prochnow said. “Through online gaming, we are trying to better understand how men might be using this platform to connect, and how we can leverage things that they are already doing, like video gaming, to enhance their social connectedness and their mental health.”

Already, Prochnow’s research has explored how online gaming communities may function as a kind of “digital third place,” allowing groups of men to form social bonds through a shared sense of competition and achievement. In their 2023 study, Prochnow and his co-authors — including fellow School of Public Health professor Dr. Megan Patterson — followed a small group of users on a website dedicated to a football simulation game. They found that members of the community often formed close relationships with one another and even discussed deeply personal topics unrelated to the game itself.

“We found that while gamers would start talking about different aspects of the game, getting advice from more senior players, those conversations slowly started to mature and change into aspects of real life,” Prochnow said. “We had one member talking to another member about adoption processes, because they knew that this member had gone through that process.”

He and his co-authors are currently working on a follow-up study to determine whether these trends exist more broadly across the online gaming world, surveying a wider range of gamers across different types of games.

While not a perfect substitute for real-life interaction, Prochnow said these online communities can be a lifeline for those lacking in-person networks of support and social interaction. Among other findings in the 2023 study, Prochnow and colleagues observed that users who reported greater feelings of depression and less access to real-life support were 40% more likely to form social bonds within the online gaming space compared to users with more real-life support.

A number of factors make online games an attractive social forum for isolated men, Prochnow said. Many of these games reward discussion and cooperation, while the relative anonymity of online spaces allows men to discuss personal topics they may be uncomfortable broaching with real-life acquaintances.

“We see that men feel comfortable talking to others, making new friends online, and specifically, in our research, online gaming is an avenue to do that,” he said. “They are already doing some of those things for fun, for achievement, for escapism, but now they’re also doing it to socialize or to reconnect with others — to find new friends and other individuals that they have things in common with.”

What’s At Stake

Calls to address the growing loneliness crisis are intensifying as its impact on individuals and communities becomes clear.

“When we are looking at men’s social connectedness and mental health, we are seeing detrimental impacts not only to themselves in the form of self-harm — worst-case scenario, suicide — but we’re also seeing a lot of impacts across the spectrum, whether that be domestic abuse or radicalized behavior,” Prochnow said.

As men struggle to find a place within conventional social and community structures, some can be drawn to harmful groups and behaviors, he said.

In the long term, Prochnow said he hopes this research can be used to inform new public health interventions, using the positive social connections forged through online gaming to encourage additional healthy behaviors among men, like building in-person communities and openly discussing matters of mental health.

“I would like to say that we would use these types of interactions as a stepping stone, or as an avenue to increase other types of health-promoting social interactions,” Prochnow said. “In traditional masculine culture, men are seen as having to be strong or silent. If they are in a safe space where they have shared interests, where they have a shared goal, you’re seeing a lot of those barriers coming down, actually.”