Digital Gaming and Academic Achievement: Within-Person Relations from Age 10 to 16 in a Norwegian Birth Cohort

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The potential impact of gaming on school performance has been widely debated, with displacement, attentional strain, and cognitive enhancement perspectives dominating the field. However, most studies are cross-sectional, limiting causal inference and conflating within- and between-person processes. This study examined bidirectional within-person relations between gaming time and academic achievement using data from 813 children (50.4% boys) assessed biennially from ages 10–16 in Trondheim, Norway. Gaming time was self-reported, and achievement was teacher-rated. A RI-CLPM separated stable between-person variance from within-person fluctuations, with sex and SES included as covariates. Results showed that within-person changes in gaming did not predict changes in achievement, nor did academic changes predict later gaming. Similarly, no significant associations emerged at the between-person level. These findings do not support displacement, attentional strain, or enhancement perspectives, and they challenge concerns that gaming inherently harms academic development. Instead, the results highlight the value of within-person approaches and align with the Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects Model (DSMM), which posits that average effects may mask heterogeneity across individuals, contexts, and types of play. The study underscores the need for more differentiated measures of gaming experiences to identify when, for whom, and under what conditions gaming may matter for academic functioning.

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