Video games and IQ are only weakly linked: across 310 effect sizes, gaming skill correlated with cognitive ability at just r = .07, and training barely transfers.
Dr. Russell T. WarneChief Scientist
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Gamers do not have meaningfully higher IQs: across 310 effect sizes, a 2018 meta-analysis found that skill at video games correlated with general cognitive ability at only r = .07, and training people on video games raised their cognitive scores by a near-zero 0.07 standard deviations, about one IQ point. The most-cited positive result, a 2022 study of American children, found that kids who gamed more gained about 2.5 extra IQ points over two years, but that effect did not hold up in a within-family check.
That gap between the headlines and the averages is the story of video games IQ research. This page covers what the large children's study actually measured, how gamers compare with non-gamers, whether playing can raise intelligence, why skill at some games tracks IQ, and what confounds every study in this area has to deal with.
What the largest study found
The study behind most "video games boost IQ" headlines is Sauce, Liebherr, Judd and Klingberg's 2022 paper in Scientific Reports. They used the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, which tested 9,855 American children at ages 9 and 10 and retested about half of them two years later. The children reported how much time they spent watching TV and videos, socializing online and gaming. The researchers built an intelligence factor from five tasks, including vocabulary, reading, memory and a spatial task, and controlled for family socioeconomic status and a polygenic score for cognitive ability.
The results were mixed in an informative way:
• At ages 9 to 10: Gaming time had no independent association with intelligence (β = 0.01). Children who spent more time watching videos (β = -0.12) or socializing (β = -0.10) scored slightly lower.
• Over two years: All children gained an average of 3.64 IQ points as they matured. Children who gamed more gained a little more, a standardized effect of 0.17 that the authors converted to 2.55 IQ points. Watching videos showed a smaller effect (1.8 points) that became non-significant when parental education replaced the broader socioeconomic measure.
• Within families: In a posthoc sibling analysis of about 1,100 children from roughly 400 families, none of the screen-time types had a significant effect on the change in intelligence. The authors attributed this to low statistical power and advised that the main results be interpreted with caution.
The study also had limits the authors named themselves. Screen time was self-reported, and all games were lumped into a single variable, from simple phone games to complex multiplayer titles. A 2.55-point effect is small, it is an association estimated within a statistical model, and the sibling result means it is not settled.
Do gamers score higher than non-gamers?
The broadest answer comes from Sala, Tatlidil and Gobet's 2018 meta-analyses in Psychological Bulletin, which pooled three kinds of evidence:
• Skill and ability: Across 310 effect sizes, the correlation between video game skill and cognitive ability averaged r = .07. The one notable exception was spatial ability, at r = .18.
• Players versus non-players: Across 315 effect sizes, regular players outperformed non-players by g = 0.33, about 5 IQ-style points (0.33 × 15). After correcting for publication bias, the estimate fell to g = 0.18, under 3 points.
• Training: Across 359 effect sizes, training people on video games produced g = 0.07, and the bias-corrected estimate was essentially zero (g = -0.01).
The player advantage is the hardest result to interpret, because these studies compare people who chose to game with people who did not. Habitual players differ in age, sex, interests and prior abilities, so the comparison cannot show that games produced the difference. Sala's team concluded that cognitive ability and video game skill are only weakly related, and that there was no evidence of a causal effect of gaming on overall cognitive ability.
Can playing video games raise your IQ?
Action games have the strongest case for specific benefits. In a 2003 Nature paper, Green and Bavelier showed that habitual action game players outperformed non-players on several visual attention tasks, and that non-players trained on an action game improved. A later meta-analysis by Bediou and colleagues, covering 2000 to 2015, found that action game players outperformed non-players by about half a standard deviation (g = 0.55) on perceptual, attentional and cognitive tasks, and that intervention studies produced a smaller effect of a third of a standard deviation (g = 0.34). The clearest gains were in top-down attention and spatial cognition. The authors also estimated that published effects were about 30% larger than effects across the full literature.
Those are gains on attention and spatial tasks, close cousins of what the games themselves demand. Psychologists call that near transfer. Far transfer, improvement on broad measures such as IQ, is what Sala's training meta-analysis failed to find. The same pattern turns up for brain-training apps and for chess: people get better at what they practise, and the benefit rarely spreads to general reasoning.
Why skill at some games tracks intelligence
If games do not raise IQ much, why do strong players of some games score well on IQ tests? Because complex games are, in effect, problem-solving tasks, and people who reason well tend to learn them faster.
• Puzzle and strategy games: Quiroga and colleagues had 134 adults play ten games of different genres under controlled conditions. The correlation between a latent general intelligence factor and a latent factor for overall game performance was 0.79, and earlier studies had reported latent correlations from 0.60 to 0.93.
• Competitive online games: Kokkinakis and colleagues found that rank in League of Legends correlated with fluid intelligence on the WASI-II at rho = .44 in 56 players.
These are correlations between ability and performance. They show that measured intelligence helps people play well, which is the reverse of the "games make you smart" claim. Spatial reasoning is the ability most often involved, a skill explained in our article on visual-spatial reasoning and why it shows up on an IQ test.
The "average IQ of players by game" rankings that circulate online are a different matter. They come from self-selected online quizzes or invented figures, with no defined sample or norm group, and they should not be read as data.
Frequently asked questions
Do gamers have higher IQs?
Not in any meaningful way. Gaming skill and cognitive ability correlate at about r = .07 on average, and the player versus non-player gap shrinks to under 3 IQ points after correcting for publication bias.
Did a study show video games raise children's IQ by 2.5 points?
The 2022 ABCD study linked more gaming time to a 2.55-point larger IQ gain over two years in a statistical model. A sibling analysis in the same paper found no significant effect, so the result is suggestive at best.
Which video games are best for your brain?
Action games show the clearest gains on attention and spatial tasks in experiments. No game genre has been shown to raise overall IQ.
Can video games lower your IQ?
The large meta-analyses found no evidence of a general cognitive cost from gaming. In the ABCD study, gaming time was unrelated to intelligence at ages 9 to 10.
Are people who are good at strategy games smarter?
Often, yes, because these games reward reasoning and fast learning. Performance on complex games correlates with intelligence, which is why some researchers have explored games as ability measures.
The takeaway
The video games IQ evidence points one way: intelligence helps people get good at complex games far more than games raise intelligence. Action games can sharpen attention and spatial skills, but training studies show almost no transfer to overall IQ, and the best-known positive cohort result is small and fragile. To see where your own reasoning ability stands, try an online IQ test built by psychometricians.
References
1. Sauce, B., Liebherr, M., Judd, N., & Klingberg, T. (2022). The impact of digital media on children's intelligence while controlling for genetic differences in cognition and socioeconomic background. Scientific Reports, 12, 7720. [doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-11341-2](. doi.org
2. Sala, G., Tatlidil, K. S., & Gobet, F. (2018). Video game training does not enhance cognitive ability: A comprehensive meta-analytic investigation. Psychological Bulletin, 144(2), 111-139. [doi.org/10.1037/bul0000139](. doi.org
3. Green, C. S., & Bavelier, D. (2003). Action video game modifies visual selective attention. Nature, 423(6939), 534-537. [doi.org/10.1038/nature01647](. doi.org
4. Bediou, B., Adams, D. M., Mayer, R. E., Tipton, E., Green, C. S., & Bavelier, D. (2018). Meta-analysis of action video game impact on perceptual, attentional, and cognitive skills. Psychological Bulletin, 144(1), 77-110. [doi.org/10.1037/bul0000130](. doi.org
5. Quiroga, M. A., Diaz, A., Román, F. J., Privado, J., & Colom, R. (2019). Intelligence and video games: Beyond "brain-games". Intelligence, 75, 85-94. [doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2019.05.001](. doi.org
6. Kokkinakis, A. V., Cowling, P. I., Drachen, A., & Wade, A. R. (2017). Exploring the relationship between video game expertise and fluid intelligence. PLOS ONE, 12(11), e0186621. [doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186621](. doi.org
Figure by RIOT IQ. Data from Sauce et al. (2022), Scientific Reports 12, 7720, Results and Figure 1 (doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-11341-2), CC BY 4.0.
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