General video gaming use among the U.S. population increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Between May and December 2020, U.S. teens aged 15 to 19 years spent an average of 112.8 daily minutes on playing games and using computers for leisure, up from 73.8 minutes per day in the corresponding period of 2019. In 2024, the daily time spent on such activities among this age group decreased to 78.6 minutes per day.

This data archive contains data on a pre-registered randomized controlled trial (RCT) testing the potential for the commercial video game Journey to prevent the exacerbation of depressive symptoms compared to an active and passive control condition. The datasets contains all anonymised raw data from the screening questionnaires of all screening participants, the raw data from all 5 questionnaires (screening, pre-test, post-test, 6-month follow-up and 12-month follow-up) and any logbooks of participants who consented to participate in the RCT, and the raw coding data of the narrative identity fragments that were coded by two coders to determine reliability of the coding process. Participants were 244 youth aged 15 to 20 years old with elevated depressive symptoms. Those who were randomized to the Journey or the active control game condition were given four weeks to play Journey or the control game. Furthermore, a number of action mechanisms which were hypothesized to affect depressive symptoms were tested. Additionally, secondary outcomes, logbook data, and other additional variables not used in the data analyses for the main outcome paper are included to facilitate the further utilization of this data. A guide to the included files can be found in the 2020_Poppelaars_RCT Journey_Read Me.pdf file. Syntax and the resulting data files are available for creating scale scores and other variables recoded or calculated from the raw data. Furthermore, syntax and the resulting data files are available for the analyses of the main outcome paper (Poppelaars, M., Lichtwarck-Aschoff, A., Otten, R., & Granic, I. (2020). Can a Commercial Video Game Prevent Depression? Null Results and Whole Sample Action Mechanisms in a Randomized Controlled Trial. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.575962). Finally, codebooks describing the project and variables, as well as a methods section are included.

Safe cycling requires situation awareness (SA), which is the basis for recognizing and anticipating hazards. Children have poorer SA than adults, which may put them at risk. This study investigates whether cyclists' SA can be trained with a video-based learning game. The effect of executive working memory on SA was also studied. Thirty-six children (9–10 years) and 22 adults (21–48 years) played the game. The game had 30 video clips filmed from a cyclist's perspective. Each clip was suddenly masked and two or three locations were presented. The player's task was to choose locations with a potential hazard and feedback was given for their answers. Working memory capacity (WMC) was tested with a counting span task. Children's and adults' performance improved while playing the game, which suggests that playing the game trains SA. Adults performed better than children, and they also glanced at hazards more while the video was playing. Children expectedly had a lower WMC than adults, but WMC did not predict performance within the groups. This indicates that SA does not depend on WMC when passively viewing videos.