When he’s live-streaming his gaming activity online, Shaun “AussieAntics” Cochrane isn’t concerned about the size of the audience — or for that matter, whether anyone is watching at all. From his perspective, it’s like “having a conversation as if a thousand people are listening, and eventually, there might be.”
During “Gaming, Streaming, and Mental Health: Impact on Youth,” a panel discussion held at the TwitchCon gaming convention in San Diego last month, AussieAntics and several other leading gamers shared their unique mental health journeys and particularly, how live-streaming offers them a key avenue for community-building and interpersonal connection.
AussieAntics explained that he uses in-game chat functions because “just having a friendly voice in the background, that is enough to help a lot of people. You can make those connections that you might not have in your life otherwise.”
San Diego had last hosted TwitchCon in 2022, and the convention will now remain in the city for the next five years. For the second time at TwitchCon, the Ruderman Family Foundation — a global leader in working to end the stigma associated with mental health and to expand access to mental health resources across myriad sectors — organized a panel discussion on the mental health implications of gaming.
The Foundation partners with Dignitas, the premier esports organization under New Meta Entertainment, to bring its expertise in mental health to the world of gaming. This collaboration seeks to leverage the widespread popularity of gaming to transform it into a creative avenue for reaching youths who are struggling with mental health challenges. The Septe. 20 panel discussion in San Diego followed a similar session at TwitchCon last year in Las Vegas.
Gamers have increasingly broadcast their play to audiences online ever since the trend took off in the mid-2010s on Twitch, an American video live-streaming service. As part of this culture, live chat logs serve as a hub where viewers and streamers can form bonds and friendships.
“There are always people you can talk to, and your friends who you play with are always there. “They’re just a message away,” the gamer Grant “Your Narrator” Etzler, who grew up on an almond farm without many friends, said during the panel.
Amber “AlarmingAmber” Pettinato even met her fiancé, Gavin, through live-streamed gaming. Their chats eventually went from discussing computer monitors to “real-life conversations,” she recalled. After one month, Gavin asked if he could fly out to meet her in-person. After a long-distance relationship for more than four years, they are now engaged and living together.
“You get to interact with the same people [through live-streaming], for the most part, every single day…my community has been so close-knit,” she said.
Another gamer on the panel, Joseph “Keeoh” Winkler, said that “I pretty much owe a lot of who I am as a person” to the live-streamed gaming culture. Specifically, it has helped him embrace a more positive mindset on failure. “You can still learn from your losses and still learn from your negative experiences… [we can] have positive impacts and be a light for others around us,” he said.
Similarly, YourNarrator’s mindset is to “treat others the way you want to be treated” when live-streaming. “You never know what somebody else is going through on the other end,” he said.
While the panel shed light on the beneficial social and mental health impacts of gaming, the session also unveiled new research that underscores how gaming environments can make youths vulnerable to mental health concerns and safety risks. Nearly 70% of teens engage in online gaming with strangers on a weekly basis, the Ruderman Family Foundation revealed in its white paper, Connected Play: Adolescent Gaming and Perceived Loneliness. One in five adolescents who engage in online gaming have encountered toxicity and safety issues, according to the study, which was conducted by the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital.
In its analysis of survey responses from a diverse group of approximately 1,500 teenagers nationwide, the white paper confirms the deep-rooted popularity of gaming among youth, as an overwhelming 93% of respondents played digital video games during the month when the survey was conducted (with 79% starting before age 10).
Additionally, the white paper found that while 62% of adolescents use in-game chat functions, nearly half also use other platforms to continue conversations. This trend brings to light the need for cross-platform safety measures to protect young gamers.
“When it comes to leveraging gaming’s potential as a social platform that minimizes loneliness, it is our hope that key stakeholders — including young people, their parents, and the tech industry — can utilize our white paper’s multifaceted findings to encourage positive, safe, and socially fulfilling online gaming experiences for adolescents,” said Jay Ruderman, President of the Ruderman Family Foundation.
Jay Ruderman is also the host of the “All About Change” podcast, where he recently hosted an episode with the famed gamer Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf.
In 2019, at the age of 16, Bugha entered the Fortnite World Cup and defeated 99 other players. However, the pure joy of that fame was short-lived when trolls hacked his phone, and Bugha had to learn to deal with online hate. He was also a victim of “swatting,” a dangerous prank where someone falsely reports a serious crime to emergency services, causing a SWAT team to be dispatched to the victim’s location.
“Definitely, early on, the trolling was a lot more massive,” Bugha told Ruderman. “As soon as you win, there’s going to be a lot of people that just instahate. There are so many people, they know nothing about you, but they’re just jealous and they’re just going to hate. But obviously, with all those haters comes a lot of supporters and you need to balance that out and just realize that these people hating, paying attention to it does nothing.
“All these people supporting you, these are the people that you really need to focus on and give your energy to. Me being young, I wasn’t able to shift my mentality that early. So, it was hard, but growing up, and just getting used to it, that helped me a lot as well.”
Regarding how he manages his mental health in the face of trolls, Bugha emphasized how he surrounds himself with “people that are supportive and not people that are just trying to tear you down.”
At the TwitchCon panel, YourNarrator also shared his advice for dealing with toxic interactions online, emphasizing the importance of “not allowing things that are outside your control to affect you negatively.”
“One of the biggest things I ever learned was not to take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from,” he said.
YourNarrator also manages his stress through routines that promote self-regulation, like drinking tea.
“I’ll just take a second, breathe for a minute, relax, center myself, have a cup of tea,” he said, “and then I go, ‘Okay, new game.’”
Jacob Kamaras is the former editor and publisher of San Diego Jewish World.
