Throughout the pandemic, people have found new ways to connect with each other online. One popular avenue is through video games, which are a natural social environment for many people. But does playing video games with friends have the potential to be more than just a distraction from stress?

According to a เข้าถึงเกมทันทีผ่าน UFABET เข้าสู่ระบบ recent study by Rachel Kowert, Emese Domahidi, and Thorsten Quandt in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, gaming has the potential to bring players together in real life. While some may see a group of people sitting around a screen as unhealthily social, these gamers have developed friendships that have helped them cope with the pandemic and make them feel supported and connected.

In their research, the authors asked participants to report the number of online video game-related friends they had not met offline, the number of online gaming-related friends they met offline, and the number of online gaming-related friends transferred into an offline friendship. They then performed centrality analyses on these relationships to examine their significance. They found a linear correspondence between ES and the number of in-game friends, after accounting for age and gender.

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Although these findings are promising, it is important to note that there were a number of limitations to this research. First, it was conducted in Germany, which can limit its generalizability to other populations. A larger survey would be beneficial to explore these relationships with more data. Additionally, it is unclear why certain groups, such as those with more emotional sensitivity, are able to build more relationships through online gaming than others.