Does playing video games, watching T.V., or being on the computer affect people’s weight?

By Kirk Tu, Suho Park, and Vritik Mistry

We did our research to see if videogames, T.V., and computers do affect people's weight and see if there is a correlation with the amount of time spent on the devices and their weight level.

We conducted a survey to see how much time people spend on videogames, how they consider their weight level, and if they think that their weight is changing or not.

Our findings show that more hours were spent playing videogames, watching T.V., or being on the computer, by underweighted teenagers.

The data shows that on average, underweighted teens play more videogames, watch more T.V., be on the computer more than overweighted and normal weighted teens.

It also shows that as teens spend more days a week playing videogames it also shows that they are leaning towards losing weight rather than gaining weight.

The survey showed that 15 people say they are losing weight, 6 say they are gaining weight, and 35 say they are staying the same.

The people that did answer the age question are all around 17 years of age.

Data

We believe this is because when teens play videogames they tend to forget to do other things, like eat, or sleep and this causes a decrease in their weight.

Another way to interpret this is that teens who are underweight are not worried that playing videogames will cause them to gain weight, while those who are overweight and are trying to lose their weight, try to avoid playing a lot of videogames, and those who are average do not play a lot of videogames, so that they stay fit.

We can use this data to show people how those who are underweighted play more and watch more.

Number of people in each weight category Average Hours Watching T.V. Average Hours Playing Videogames Average Hours on the Computer Average Days on the T.V., videogames, or the computer for more than 3 Hours
Underweight: 4 5.75 7.375 8.25 5.25
Below Average: 3 0.166 2 2.5 5.66
Average: 33 0.790 2.04 3.03 4.75
Above Average: 13 1.041 0.875 2.45 4.53
Overweight: 3 0.833 3.33 5.16 7