Elon Musk says ‘play video games or stay dumb’: The study he shared reveals how gaming and exercise relate to brain health

Billionaire Elon Musk sparked a debate online over video gaming after sharing a 2025 study and saying, “play video games or stay dumb.” But the study itself suggests the relationship between gaming, exercise, mental health and brain function is more complicated.

The 2025 study examined the relationship between physical activity, video-game playing, cognitive performance and mental health. Researchers found that people who met physical-activity recommendations tended to report fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety, while people who spent more time playing video games tended to perform better on several cognitive tests.

But there is an important catch: the study shows associations, not proof that gaming makes people smarter or that exercise directly prevents depression and anxiety.



The research was a cross-sectional online study conducted internationally. More than 2,600 people initially signed up, 1,412 provided usable cognitive and questionnaire data, and 923 participants remained in the final analysis after exclusions for factors including unlikely responses, outliers and missing data. The average age of the final group was about 55 years.

Exercise was linked to better mental health

The researchers looked at whether participants met the World Health Organization's recommendation of at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week. They found no significant association between meeting that physical-activity threshold and the cognitive measures they tested.

Mental health showed a different pattern. Participants who met the physical-activity recommendation had lower scores on the PHQ-2 and GAD-2, the brief screening tools used to assess symptoms of depression and anxiety.

The researchers found that people meeting the activity guideline were more likely to have no or very mild symptoms on these measures. However, the study did not establish that exercise itself caused the better mental-health outcomes. The authors also point out that PHQ-2 and GAD-2 are brief screening tools and do not provide a complete assessment of mental health.

Video games showed a different pattern

Gaming was associated with cognitive performance rather than the mental-health measures. The researchers found significant associations between video-game playing and four of the five cognitive outcomes they examined: short-term memory, reasoning, processing speed and overall cognitive performance. Video-game playing was not significantly associated with the participants' PHQ-2 or GAD-2 scores.

Participants were divided into three groups based on their reported gaming habits: non-gamers, infrequent gamers who played for less than three hours a week, and frequent gamers who played at least three hours a week. The researchers observed a modest cognitive difference between non-gamers and infrequent gamers, while the differences were generally stronger among frequent gamers.

Does gaming actually make you smarter?

Not necessarily. This is where Musk's “play video games or stay dumb” line goes beyond what the research can establish. The study was cross-sectional, meaning researchers examined participants' reported habits and test results rather than randomly assigning people to exercise or gaming programs and following them over time.

That means the researchers cannot establish cause and effect. It is possible that regular gaming contributes to better performance on some cognitive tasks. But it is also possible that people with stronger cognitive abilities are more likely to play video games regularly.

The researchers acknowledge this limitation and say future longitudinal studies will be needed to determine the direction of the relationship.

The study has another important limitation

The researchers also acknowledge that they could not determine whether particular types of games were responsible for the cognitive associations.

Participants reported the amount of time they spent playing different genres, but there were too few people classified as action gamers to make a statistically meaningful comparison between action and non-action games.

There is also a disclosed conflict of interest worth mentioning. The cognitive tests were developed and marketed by Creyos, formerly Cambridge Brain Sciences. Three of the study authors have professional connections with the company, although the authors state that their research was not influenced by the company's activities and that the testing platform was provided at no cost.

So, should you exercise or play video games?

The study does not really ask you to choose.

Its findings suggest that physical activity and gaming may be associated with different aspects of brain health: physical activity with better measures of depression and anxiety, and gaming with better performance on several cognitive tests.

The authors ultimately suggest that overall brain health may benefit from combinations of interventions, including activities that involve both physical and cognitive components.

But that combination was not directly tested in this study.

So the most accurate takeaway isn't “play video games or stay dumb.”

It is this: exercise and gaming showed different associations with mental and cognitive health — but more research is needed to determine whether either activity actually causes those benefits.