Board games can provide more than just entertainment.
Imagine a young family on a Sunday night at home. Not wanting to be in front of the television (again), but wanting to find some time to be together in a relaxing way, winding down after a busy day. Mom pulls out a dusty box from the closet, and everyone gathers around the table to play a board game that some of them forgot, or never even knew they owned.
Consider all the things that are happening during the experience of playing that game. The family is spending time together, without a screen in front of them, forging bonds and friendships. They’re talking and laughing together, and it’s not just about the game. The little ones are reading (often voluntarily), and learning the social cues of taking turns, while the older children are learning how to do just enough trash talk without pushing things too far. In some games, the family is cooperating towards a shared goal, or at least the siblings are helping each other take optimal turns to take down their parents.
All of those positive experiences create a positive family dynamic, but all of them are also key to many facets of positive mental health.
Board games are not a treatment modality. They won’t provide a cure for depression or anxiety. But they can be a vehicle for creating a state of well-being, and offer an easy way for everyone, regardless of age, to participate in activities that contribute to positive mental health – social connection, problem-solving, routine, laughter, cooperation, focused attention and screen-free time.
The Importance of Social Connection
The CDC states that roughly 1 in 3 US adults report feeling lonely, while around 1 in 4 reports not having social and emotional support (link).
Far too often, technology makes it easy enough to “socialize” through text message or forum post, social media update or selfie. While those actions are certainly social and have meaning, they aren’t quite the same as sitting together in the same room with someone and carrying on that conversation face-to-face.
A recent study in Saudi Arabia notes that there is a significant association between social isolation and symptoms of depression (link).
Board Games Make Social Interaction Less Intimidating
Board games can help overcome one of the biggest barriers that people have in forming social bonds – they offer them a reason to come together. With board games, you don’t need to take the sometimes awkward step of inviting someone over simply to socialize; you’re inviting them to do a mutually beneficial activity that you couldn’t do apart.
Getting together physically implies a certain amount of “specialness” these days. This is especially true of young people and families, for whom the act of getting together can be logistically difficult – they are often giving up valuable study or relaxation time, moving work hours or hiring a babysitter to make it happen.
With a board game as the shared purpose, you don’t need to throw a party, or cater a full meal. You need a few snacks and drinks, and enough seats at the table. Families can bring their kids; adults can relax and wind down instead of dressing up formally.
You have a shared objective, shared rules, and shared expectations. Board game night has a built-in topic of conversation, and even silence can be interpreted as intense concentration.
After all, even just sitting in a room with strangers, or near strangers, and being expected to make conversation can be intimidating, even for an extrovert. Board games can help to provide some of the social lubrication needed to foster friendship and connection among those of any age group.
Focused Play is a Break From Everyday Stress
We often think of play as a kid’s activity, but more and more research is showing that adults need play too. There are many benefits to play, which include stress reduction, creative thinking and innovation, strengthened relationships and improved cognitive functioning.
When you’re sitting at the table around a board game with friends, you’re not thinking about that work project that’s due tomorrow afternoon, or the problems your youngest kids are having in school, your daughter’s problematic new boyfriend, or those household chores you just didn’t get to.
You’re trying to make a word with those letter tiles you just pulled out of the bag last turn.
That’s eustress – a challenging but achievable goal that has a clear solution and no real consequences. A problem that you can solve, and one that disappears once the game goes back into the box.
Games Provide Opportunities for Mastery
Once you rearrange those tiles and shock the table with a 30-point word to take the lead, you’re also practicing something that can reduce feelings of vulnerability and improve self-esteem – building mastery.
Yes, there are some games, children’s games in particular, that are simply luck-based games with no skills at all. However, even with old classic games, there are opportunities for utilizing skills that translate to everyday use. Take the classic game of Monopoly – the math behind handling the money is a skill that the young players can build on, while the business majors will find challenge in the art of the deal in getting the last property you needed to build a hotel.
But even if you just focus on small, social party games, you get to work on skills like vocabulary in Codenames, how to be specific without being too specific in Spyfall, or in intuiting the thought process of others in ito.
The Power of Anticipation
Giving yourself something to look forward to can also provide many mental health benefits, from increases in overall happiness, lower overall stress, and more positive memories and associations.
After all, it’s a lot easier to get through a workday knowing that a vacation is coming up. While Game Night might not be on the same level, it can provide a weekly reason to look forward to Thursday, when you know that you’re going to have a good time with friends.
One common experience in the board gaming community is that most of the time, one game leads to another. And one game night leads to another as well. Having that predictable social event on your calendar every week or every month is a recurring opportunity to forge bonds that last.
After all, the reason that most adults have lost contact with their friends isn’t because you stopped liking one another. Most of the time, it’s just that you got too busy, and so did they.
Board games can provide structure that helps prevent that.
When it Doesn’t Work
There is no magic inherent in board games that makes them a universal solution.
There are bad group dynamics, where one or more of the participants simply don’t get along. That can be exacerbated by excessive competitiveness, or it can just be an unresolved disagreement that festers.
There are also personal issues in board gaming. If you find yourself overcommitting to participation – trading game night for sleep, feeling an obligation to attend on nights when you’d rather be doing something else, overspending on the hobby or the “party” aspects of the occasion – you may be on the wrong path. Some people find that the competition that most find engaging is, for them, a source of self-esteem issues or anxiety over making the wrong move.
Sometimes, board gaming just isn’t working. You can reduce your participation, find a more positive group, or simply find an alternative solution.
Engaging in a Healthy Social Life through Gaming
For most people, however, establishing even a semi-regular game night with your friends, or attending one through a church, library or community meetup is a strong method of engaging in pro-mental health behaviors that can contribute to a happier life.
Whether that means increasing the size of your social circle, finding a new hobby to participate in, or simply having an excuse to get out and meet some new people for a laugh and a coffee now and again, board gaming can be a great vehicle for improving well-being, providing a buffer against some of the stress, pressure and difficulties of modern life.
And that’s true whether you win the game, or go bankrupt on Park Place.
The most valuable thing about a board game may not be the strategy, the challenge or even the game itself. It may simply be that it gives us a reason to sit down at the same table.