Szymon Olejarnik

So we proved that player wellbeing is in fact multidimensional, spanning internal and external wellbeing! This is one of the first multidimensional measures of wellbeing for use in cyberpsychology. We now hope that our procedure is reproduced in the future.

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We then turned to "external wellbeing". Physical health only had a single measure removed, showing acceptable statistics as a measure. Life circumstances proved to be the best one, with very strong psychometric quality.

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We first looked at social functioning, and it turned out to be a good measure with little removals taking place. Mental health proved trickier - we removed a lot of emotional wellbeing measures and all of emotional intelligence. But it was also a good measure!

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We proposed that based on what's shown to be influenced by video games, wellbeing comprises 4 dimensions - social functioning, mental health, physical health and life circumstances. To test this, we carried out confirmatory factor analyses to refine the PMDWell framework.

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But as mentioned before, no one in video game psychology tried to consider wellbeing as multidimensional. Even worse, we don't have a good practical measure of multidimensional wellbeing in video game psychology. This is why we constructed our own, starting at 77 items.

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The relationships are quite mixed. Generally "healthy" players, those who play casually, benefit the most - better mental and physical health, and better life circumstances. The moment engagement becomes pathological, all these metrics nosedive.

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The issue is the narrow focus of cyberpsychology on mental health - it dominated video game/wellbeing literature. But other branches of psychology, economics and policy consider other aspects, like physical health, finances and occupation.

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The PMDWell Framework: A Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Video Game Players’ Wellbeing Despite the video game moral panics that have sprung up since the early 1990s, videogames remain a popular medium, increasing in capacity and market v…

NEW PUBLICATION: A new multidimensional measure of video game player wellbeing: a 🧵
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

There's much discourse on how video games influence wellbeing - it's very complicated/fragmented, with little to show for.

@ukri.org @uniofnottingham.bsky.social [1/]

Interesting how it turned out in the US. My local shops in the UK had stock on shelves, even though I pre-ordered. These seem to be gone now. Tariffs perhaps?

Brilliant article. It's very crucial to understand that just because the hourly engagement is high doesn't mean it's pathological and debilitating.

Hi reminder to vote for songs #13 and $15 in today's #Eurovision2025 grand final! 🥰

Took one as well, about €55 per head with Ouigo. Renfe was asking for about €70-€100 for trains earlier in the day, so it was a no-brainer really.

Wondering how the Madrid-Seville line is doing price and market wise. Last time I was shopping for tickets to Seville, they were as high as €100 per person in early April.

Wychodzi drożej o 50zł niż zestaw z Mario Kartem w UK. Ałć.

I swear, it's for research purposes.

Polish woman, 80, faces deportation from UK after mistakenly filling in form online Elzbieta Olszewska refused time to complete paper application but was only told of decision after visitor visa had expired

Insanity, utter insanity. Physical BRPs were scrapped in favour of online immigration profiles. EUSS is done entirely online. So it's genuinely not insane to think that if everything is online, then a person should apply online.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Figure 1
A line plot displaying my productivity dependant on the article writing stage.

In that a pragmatic measure isn't going to tackle the root cause. Good for the Government, genuinely kudos for trying to look out for the youth. But it's like slapping a bandage on a bleeding aorta.

Good thing is that parental control use is on the rise, at least since COVID. Bad thing is that kids are way smarter than we think. They'll get access to the Internet one way or another. A humorous tweet from way back when comes to mind:

That's why more work and research on this is needed to develop solutions, instead of seemingly removing the cause of the problem. Ultimately this problem goes way back before Musk was relevant in the social media space - gore, violence and sensitive content was easily reachable on Twitter.

Also does not help that the child can just return home and get access to social media. Not much changes. Removing phones from schools effectively brushes all the problems under the rug, effectively telling parents that schools want nothing to do with their child's social media activity.

Not really, legislation and regulatory bodies are just lagging behind with no willingness to change that. Traditional media is heavily controlled by Ofcom. If there's an issue with programming, you can easily report it. With social media, you're at the platform's mercy to control content and access.

Labour to scrutinise school smartphone bans as pressure grows over impact on teenagers Exclusive: TV drama Adolescence adds to pressure from MPs for action to help schools tackle impact of social media

The school phone ban is barking at the wrong tree. Blame the social media, not the end-users. Do something about them.

www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Currently sitting on a breakthrough in video game psychology research. Can't wait until it sees the light of day!

Diary of an academic: Day 1.

Dear diary,

I noticed something. My enjoyment of work comes from if my statistical tests come out significant. Don't know whether it's good or bad.

Looking at you, AMOS. 😭

I think the biggest annoyance with science, or research in general, is that the statistical packages that aren't R (or ggplot specifically) produce such ugly figures that you spend hours in Microsoft Visio making something that isn't an eyesore to look at.

I had the pleasure to present as an Expert Speaker at the @sydhh.bsky.social workshop, where I talked to a group of 18 - 25 year olds with long-term health conditions about using video games as therapy tools using Sea Hero Quest and Autcraft as examples.

@ukri.org @uniofnottingham.bsky.social

Tories accuse Vance of being ‘deeply disrespectful’ to Britain and France with jibe about European troops – UK politics live James Cartlidge, shadow defence secretary, says US vice president has ‘ignored service and sacrifice’ after Britain and France sent troops to Afghanistan

You know you fucked up if even the Tories don't agree with you.

www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Instagram Reels has randomly decided to recommend violent videos to people, myself included. We're talking shootings, gore, surgical procedures, people dying.

Social media needs legal enforcement. This is not good.