ROME — Being an avid gamer might bring an unexpected benefit to your sex life, a new study finds.
Researchers at Sapienza University of Rome in Italy surveyed 396 Italian men between the ages of 18 and 50, with 287 of them identifying as “gamers”— meaning they played for at least an hour a day on average.
The survey mainly polled respondents on their sexual functioning. The topic of video games and sexual health was a deep interest of the researchers, many of whom considered themselves gamers.
The researchers found that while gamers and non-gamers showed no difference in erectile and orgasmic function, gamers were less likely to report premature ejaculation than non-gamers.
A lessened desire for intercourse among gamers, the researchers hypothesized, could be responsible for this finding. No definitive reason was able to be confirmed, however.
“I’d like my colleagues to consider assessing video game use (and abuse) during evaluations of male sexual dysfunctions,” says Andrea Sansone, the study’s co-author (and a self-described gamer himself) in an interview with PsyPost.org.
Acknowledging that their data was derived from anonymous self-reported surveys, the researchers also argued that perhaps not all games have the same effect on men’s performance in bed.
“Are all games equal?” asks Sansone. “Is an hour of MiniMetro as stressful as a 60-minutes match of League of Legends? And is that going to cause any difference?”
The study was of a cross-sectional variety— i.e., it pulled data from adult men at a specific point in time.
Considering how there are over 1.8 billion gamers on Earth, perhaps the effects of gaming on other aspects of one’s life should be more closely examined.
The study’s findings were published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.