Your move: 5 surprising mental health benefits of board games

Phones, laptops, consoles, tablets – you name it. If it has a screen, there’s a good chance the average New Zealander has spent a fair bit of time staring at it over the past few months.

But screen time isn’t all we’ve been up to. In our age of hyper-connectivity and cutting-edge technology, you might be surprised to learn that board games have surged in popularity in recent months. Remember them?  

Far from being just a fun way to kill a couple of hours and create life-long rifts between family members (who let Uncle Dave be the banker, anyway?), did you know that board games offer up a host of mental health benefits too? Here are a few of our favourites. 

As children, we don’t socialise over dinner parties, long lunches or coffee dates – we socialise by playing. But as we ‘grow up’ and inevitably ‘play’ less, those play-based opportunities for socialising can become increasingly scarce.

Board games offer an affordable, accessible and healthy way for us to connect (and re-connect) with friends and family. And there are examples from all over the world of people using board games as a tool to help tackle loneliness and isolation too – particularly among the elderly.  

It might be over 1500 years old, but chess still wields some brilliant benefits for modern-day brains. One German study found that the creative and analytical thought-processes required to play chess can help give both the left and right side of our brains a workout. Some studies have even suggested that playing chess can actually help boost your IQ (though the science is still a little murky).

And even if you’ve never played a game of chess in your life, the simple act of learning a new skill can stimulate neurons and help improve your cognitive performance “on a number of tasks.” 

A 2013 French study found that the risk of dementia was 15 per cent lower in board game players vs. non-players over a 20-year period, and concluded that “stimulating leisure activities are considered as possible protective factors against dementia and cognitive decline”. With dementia deaths in New Zealand spiking in recent years, there’s certainly no harm in blowing the dust off the chess set every now and then.

While your experiences playing Monopoly with your uber-competitive pals may have you believe otherwise, experts have also found that playing board games (and even video games) can help lower stress and increase feelings of calmness and enthusiasm in players – just ask the scientists behind this 2017 study on experienced players of the game Baduk (a 2,500-year-old Chinese board game that’s still popular today).

Of course, there’s no point in playing any game if you don’t find it enjoyable. So whether you pull out the Monopoly board, settle in for an hours-long session of Risk, or blow the cobwebs off the Mahjong make sure you pick a board game that brings you joy. The simple act of having fun can help reduce stress, boost serotonin, relieve symptoms of anxiety and depression and so much more. 

Now, it’s your move.