Gaining a Competitive Edge: Longitudinal Associations Between Children’s Competitive Video Game Playing, Conduct Problems, Peer Relations, and Prosocial Behavior

Playful competition is an important hallmark of healthy child development. Playful competition facilitates moral learning, rewards perspective-taking skills, and challenges children to healthily regulate unpleasant emotions such as frustration, anger, and jealousy. Despite this, research on the effects of competitive video gaming has focused on antisocial outcomes, such as declines in prosocial behavior. Moreover, methodological shortcomings …