How Gaming has Positively Affected my Mental Health [Column]

In May of 2020, I was live on Twitch with two of my best friends. We were playing CS:GO and we had this one really funny guy playing with us. He was a total stranger, but something clicked between us all while we were playing competitive on Dust 2. I remember that after the game, I was talking with my friends. 

“I really liked that guy’s voice, we should invite him to play another game with us,” I said.

“Yeah he was funny, let’s play another game with him,” My friend replied. 

So we invited him to play another game with us and we kept the same energy the whole time. He was really funny and he was also really good at the game, so we had to keep him around. 

I’ve been streaming on Twitch for almost three years. Throughout that time, a lot has changed. I’ve gained new friends, I’ve lost friends, I’ve gotten better at some games, I’ve lost skill in others. Overall, I think that streaming has positively affected my mental health. It’s given me people to talk to when I’m feeling down, it’s something I can do to take my mind off of things, plus it’s something I make a little bit of money off of. Sure it has some negatives. There are a lot of toxic people in games and in chat, losing games can be upsetting, but when you think about all of the positives, they outweigh all the bad things.

The four of us made a Discord server together and that was the beginning of something great. We started playing games together almost every day and it turned out he streamed and made Youtube videos, too. So we started making content together. He was someone I could spend hours talking to and it wouldn’t ever get boring. I have done several eight hour long streams where it’s just me and him playing Rust together having a good time. He was just a good friend to talk to and spend time with. Without streaming and video games, I would’ve never had him as a friend. I probably wouldn’t have ever met him, because he lives in a completely different state. I would confidently say that streaming has made my mental health better.