Children who play video games for less than an hour a day are better adjusted than those who have never used them or play them to excess, Daily Mail reports.

Researchers found that young people who indulged in a short spell of gaming were very sociable and were most likely to say they were satisfied with their lives. In contrast, those who spent more than half their free time playing electronic games were less well-adjusted, the University of Oxford scientists found.

The study, published today in the journal Pediatrics, is thought to be the first to examine both the positive and negative effects of gaming using a representative sample of children and teenagers. It involved nearly 5,000 young people - half male and half female - drawn from a nationally representative study of UK households.

The participants, aged from 10 to 15, were asked how much time they typically spent on console-based or computer-based games such as the Nintendo Wii or Sony PlayStation. The same group also answered questions about how satisfied they were with their lives, their levels of hyperactivity and inattention, empathy, and how they got on with their peers.

The study found that three in four British children and teenagers play video games on a daily basis. Those who play for less than an hour a day - less than one third of their daily free time - also appeared to have fewer friendship and emotional problems. They also reported less hyperactivity than the other groups.

Experts found that video games had no positive or negative effects for young people who played ‘moderately’ - i.e. between one and three hours a day.

The findings also show that the influence of video games on children - whether for good or bad - is very small when compared with more enduring factors, such as whether the child is from a functioning family, their school relationships and whether they are materially deprived.