Journal of Student Research 2022

Defining Esports Student-Athletes and the Behaviors that Affect Academic Performance

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performance such as mental health, stress, or motivation. This study debunks the common stereotype that video games negatively affect academic performance. This negative stigma of video games it not supported since the study that we conducted showed that there is not any cause and affect relationships. This study did not look at all factors that could affect academic performance, but within this study we found that the number of hours dedicated towards video games does not affect academic performance as both student-athletes and student gamers have a similar average GPA. The results in this study should be interpreted with caution based upon their GPA because there are other factors that could influence a student’s academic achievement, such as stressors of mental health, course difficulty, and life itself. Conclusion The present study found that Esports student-athletes do well managing their academics despite heavy video game consumption. Compared to other studies, student-athletes have better academic performance behaviors and video games do not affect academic achievement if the intention is not for leisure. For Esports student-athletes, playing video games for competition can be treated as like a real sport, since they serve for practice and allow the student-athlete to be best they can be. Although playing video games competitively can still be for leisure, the intention of this study was to determine whether the behaviors of student-athletes in sports are seen in Esports student-athletes as well. Although the results from this study do not follow our expectations that student-athletes do better than the average student using video games, there are additional factors, such as clubs, outside activities, mental health, that can affect an individual’s peformance in school that were not looked at. Future research could be done to look more directly at an Esports player’s life to get qualitative data on such students-athlete’s academic achievement. If the study was to be conducted further, the study would be have to look at the demographics of the students to determine which group of people are more targeted towards dedication for video games and how it affect their academic behaviors. To determine academic behaviors in further research, the study would look at specific academic behaviors, such as how a student studies.