Don’t blame the game for the brain pain

9th February 2010 — Parents may have one less thing to worry about when their child gets on the games console: it seems the use of electronic media is not associated with headaches – at least not in adolescents.

Researchers studied the gaming habits of 1,025 youngsters aged between 13 and 17. They found no link between the use of computer games, mobile phones or television and the occurrence of headaches or migraines.

However, the researchers found one exception to the rule: listening to one or two hours of music each day resulted in a pounding headache.

The study

Investigators in Germany reported that most of the adolescents they studied used computers (85%), watched TV or listened to music (90%); otherwise only 23% of the participants used their mobile phones and only 25% played with game consoles on a daily basis.

The researchers interviewed 489 teenagers who claimed to suffer from headaches and 536 who said they did not. When the two groups were compared, no associations were found for television viewing, electronic gaming, mobile phone usage or computer usage.

The team, led by Dr Astrid Milde-Busch, from Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, concluded that, “apart from an association between listening to music on a daily basis and overall headache,
no consistent associations between the use of electronic media and different types of headache
were observed”.

Dr Milde-Busch says in a statement that "Excessive use of electronic media is often reported to be associated with long-lasting adverse effects on health like obesity or lack of regular exercise, or unspecific symptoms like tiredness, stress, concentration difficulties and sleep disturbances.

“Studies into the occurrence of headaches have had mixed results and for some types of media, in particular computer games, are completely lacking".

Screen time v Real life

The researchers say they can’t be sure why teenagers who listen to music report more headaches. Dr Milde-Busch says "It cannot be concluded whether the habit of listening to music is the cause of frequent headaches, or the consequence in the sense a self-therapy by relaxation."

The study is published in the open access journal BMC Neurology.

Sue Palmer, bestselling author of the book ‘Toxic Childhood,’ tells us that headaches are just one of the things parents need to worry about as a result of Xboxes, Wiis, mobiles and TVs. “Most important is that, the more time children spend communing with screens, the less time they have for interacting with real people and gaining first-hand experience of the world (in real time and real space) – all necessary for physical, social, emotional and cognitive development,” she tells us.