The Effects of Web-Based Puzzle Games on the Concentration and Perceived Productivity of High School Students

Angelina Ferguson

March 30, 2026

Casual gaming has been on a steady rise in popularity since the introduction of home video game consoles— such as the Magnova Odyssey and the Atari— in the early 1970s. Arcade cabinets became largely a thing of the past, as video games have become more accessible over time, extending even beyond occasional, casual gaming, moving toward frequently participating in games that are playable in web browsers. The initial video game industry was marketed toward games for the whole family; however, as time went on, the target audience for video games shifted to teenagers, creating a demand for both long, action-packed games with an intensive storyline, and short, mindless games that can be played to pass free time (Juul, 2010). Though there is still a demand for longer, more time consuming games, there has been an increase in a demand for short, puzzle games that can be played anywhere at any time, and thus the concept of the web-based puzzle game was born. Web-based puzzle games, such as Tetris, Wordle, and 2048 are common forms of mindless entertainment, and can be played by anyone with access to a device with a web-browser— which is most of the population, as almost everyone has a cell phone or a computer. The increased accessibility of these games among specifically high school students, however, has been thought to influence daily school life significantly.

Literature Review

Current Integration of Games in the Classroom

With the increased prevalence of video games in everyday life comes the inevitable integration of video games in the classroom, as it has become more commonplace for teachers to utilize games such as Blooket, Kahoot, and Prodigy to enhance the learning experience for students. Making learning an enjoyable, fun experience encourages them to engage with the content of the lesson which then, in turn, assists in retention of new information. A study published in the Journal of Science Education and Technology finds that the specific method used in teaching doesn’t matter as much as creating a positive experience for students, as over time, students begin to associate the way they feel while in the classroom with their attitude toward learning, and will retain more information as a result of associating learning with positive emotions. Considering most children enjoy playing video games, learning games have emerged and made their way into the classroom, allowing students to still learn while also playing a game, helping them to remember the material they’re being taught better in comparison to students who have learned using more mundane methods (Barko & Sadler, 2012). Even when video games themselves are not being used in classrooms, similar concepts that derive from common mechanics of video games present themselves, such as the use of a points system, levels, leaderboards, and rewards. In younger classrooms specifically, teachers often use levels in relation to privileges and behavior, where students can move up levels if they are doing what they’re supposed to and behaving appropriately; these levels systems also often tie into a reward system, where well-behaved students can “level up” and receive small toys for their commendable effort. The gamification of the classroom environment is not lost on older grades, as middle school and high school classrooms tend to use a leaderboard system when they teach multiple sections of the same class, and the classes that do the most assignments or score the highest on tests are placed at the top of a leaderboard and can earn extra credit as a result (Dicheva et al., 2015). Furthermore, a study published in Entertainment Computing advanced this notion, showing that video games are no longer solely used for recreational purposes, but can also be used to aid in cultivating other skills. School is more than a place for learning textbook knowledge, as students also learn important soft skills necessary for success in adult life, such as collaboration and interpersonality.

Current Negative Perceptions of Video Games in Classroom Settings

        Though video games have increasingly been incorporated into learning, there remains some concerns regarding potential negative effects of video games on the mind. For example, video games are not often used in German English classrooms, as they tend to be portrayed negatively in textbooks due to the potential development of gaming disorders, which can harm both social and academic performance.  (Becker, 2023). Furthermore, while recreational gaming every once in a while is not inherently harmful to students, excessive gaming can plague the mind of easily influenced students, slowly creeping into their lives beyond free time, and preventing them from managing their time adequately among completing schoolwork, taking care of themselves, and playing video games. Over time, increased indulgence in video games tends to also follow lack of sleep, making it more difficult to focus in school the following day (Gottfried & Sitodi, 2024). Building on this, playing video games within the classroom tends to accompany playing video games more frequently outside of school, as well; even though video games used as a part of the learning process aim to be family friendly, games that are played outside of the classroom may not necessarily be the same, potentially exposing students to cyberbullying of themselves and other players which, in turn, contributes to damaged mental health. With a reduced mental state as a result of distress from bullying comes lessened mental functioning, which then leads to reduced development of prosocial skills, lessened motivation to learn, and an inability to learn effectively as a whole (Anderson & Bushman, 2001).

What Makes a Web-Based Puzzle Game Different from Other Video Games?

Video games and the effects they have on the mind vary from each other greatly because video games, while all united through their digital format, can differ greatly in all other aspects. To determine these differences, video games are sorted based on genre and rating. The Entertainment Software Rating Board— more commonly known as the ESRB— rates video games using a letter system to determine their appropriateness for various age demographics, ranging from E for everyone, meaning that the game is family friendly and can be enjoyed by players of various demographics, to M for mature, meaning that the game contains explicit content and should only be played by those with developed enough minds to process these heavy topics, which the ESRB deems to be players seventeen and older. The ESRB rating system helps parents and teachers alike to determine what kinds of games are most appropriate for children to be playing, which can play a huge role in the classroom especially when it comes to choosing and even potentially developing new games to be used in learning (Ruggil & McAllister, 2016).

When it comes to dividing video games by genre, the categories become more subjective, with different video game genres being created as the need for new categories arises, some common ones that tend not to change being action games, role-playing games, sports games, and simulation games, and, of course, puzzle games. Puzzle games have existed before video games, with games such as Sudoku and crossword puzzles being among some of the most popular ones. This popularity is warranted, as puzzles play an important role in human life. According to Marcel Dansei (2002), on a psychological level, humans are drawn to play puzzle games, giving their subconscious a reason for their existence, even if the individual does not recognize it. Playing these puzzle games is emotionally rewarding, as it grants a sense of mastery in the skill when completed and gives the individual a feeling of restored order, which can be difficult to come by in stressful situations, especially in school, where work may pile up and seem impossible to complete. As video games in general improve and become more accessible with the growing field of technology, web-based puzzle games become more prevalent in the lives of humans more than puzzle games in general have, as having puzzle games playable in web browsers makes them able to run on any device with a browser and an internet connection. Nowadays, almost everyone has access to a cellphone at all times, meaning that these web-based puzzle games can be played any time, slithering their way into our lives more than previously imagined.

Purpose of the Present Study and Hypothesis

        While studies have been conducted to determine the effect of web-based puzzle games on students, these populations tend to consist of larger groups of a wider age range or of college students. In a study published in the Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, two groups of students were studied to determine their concentration on a given task in relation to whether they played action games or web-based puzzle games— the results of which giving insight into how web-based puzzle games might impact students’ ability to concentrate on their schoolwork (Jiwal et al., 2019). Though other studies explore a similar concept through similar methods, the present study aims to address the gap of how high schoolers’ concentration on their schoolwork is impacted by web-based puzzle games. High school students are on a different level of cognitive functioning than adults, as their brains are not as fully developed, and so the impact of web-based puzzle games on high school students may vary greatly due to these cognitive differences among students of different ages and educational levels. Additionally, whether or not students are aware that their productivity may be harmed by playing web-based puzzle games might play a role in how they perceive their ability to be productive when it comes to completing their schoolwork. In a study focusing on performance in school and video games specifically, students ages nine to sixteen were interviewed— some of these students had a game console for a while at the time of the survey, some had just recently gotten one, and some did not have one, suggesting that video games might have some kind of correspondence with poor performance in school (Creasey & Meyers, 2010). Younger students may be less willing to admit that they’re having trouble being productive in school in comparison to college students, as the high school students may have a tendency to want approval, and therefore may want to make themselves seem more productive than they actually are. This leads to the research question— To what extent does playing a web-based puzzle game impact high school students’ concentration, and how does playing these games regularly alter their perception of productivity regarding their schoolwork in general? To examine this question, this study will be broken into two parts; an experiment with two pre-test post-test groups, and a series of interviews. From this, it is hypothesized that among the experimental participants, those who indulge in web-based puzzle games while completing the task will perform poorer than those who don’t, indicating that students who play web-based puzzle games will be less concentrated on their schoolwork. Likewise, of the interview participants, those who report playing web-based puzzle games often will have a tendency to also report feeling less productive, and vice versa.

Methods

Research Design Rationale

        For this research study, a mixed-methods approach was used to examine two different parts of the study— an experiment, and an interview. As per Leedy & Ormrod (2021), quantitative data methods are used when numeric values are being examined to determine what they mean in the context of the research study, often being used in conjunction with a computer program to identify potential patterns. The use of quantitative data methods makes most sense for the experiment, as all data collected from the experiment was numeric. Additionally, Leedy & Ormrod (2021) define qualitative research as non-numeric data that is examined closely to determine what it means as well as what implications it may have on the present study. Since the interviews consisted of all open-ended questions, they each had to be examined using a different method from the experimental portion— with the intent of the interview portion being to supplement the findings of the experimental portion, helping to triangulate the findings.

Participants and Sampling

        All participants were high schoolers from the same school district. To participate, all participants had to fill out an interest form with their name, grade, which parts of the study they wished to participate in, and two questions to determine eligibility (See Appendix A).  After a sufficient number of interest forms were received, all potential participants’ names were inputted into a random wheel picker to determine which parts of the study they would be participating in, and were then emailed to confirm their participation in the study, and provide them with the next steps for participating. While selection was completely random and was open to all students from grades nine to twelve, the majority of interested and selected participants were in eleventh grade.

Research Ethics

        Prior to recruiting participants, this study underwent review by both the school principal of the school in which participants were selected from, and by the Institutional Review Board (IBR) at New Jersey City University (See Appendix B). All participants were required to sign and return a minor assent form and a parental consent form prior to participating for each part of the study they would be participating in. (See Appendix C). Upon scheduling a date of participation, participants were taken into a secluded room to minimize distractions and provide them with utmost privacy. Each participant was reminded that their participation in the study was completely voluntary, and that they had the right to stop at any point, skip any part of the study, and to opt out of the study after participating for any reason. All participants’ names were deidentified with a randomized ID code, and any audio recordings of interview participants were kept on a locked device. All interview audio recordings and participant consent forms will be deleted after three years of the end of this study.

Study Instruments

The experimental portion of this study consisted of an identical pre-test and post-test, for which the Stroop Task was used. The Stroop Task is a research tool widely used to determine participants’ concentration by presenting the name of a color and asking them to identify the ink color of the word. This is accomplished through trials that are incongruent— where the color named does not match the ink color it is in— or congruent— where the color named matches the color of the ink it is in. This tool forces participants to overcome the instinct to name the color as opposed to naming the color of the ink; the faster the participant responds, the more concentrated they are on the task, (Stroop, 1935). The interruption for the treatment group was a Javascript version of Tetris that is free for anyone to use, as the official Tetris website prohibits use for purposes other than recreational gaming without explicit permission. The interruption for the treatment group was a short excerpt related to gaming (See Appendix D).

Study Procedures

        For the experimental portion of the study, participants were told to complete the Stroop Task once, and then have their congruent, incongruent, and Stroop scores recorded before moving to the next part. The control group would then have five minutes to read the provided excerpt— if the five minutes ended before the participant finished reading the excerpt, they would move on to the next part of the experiment without finishing. The treatment group would also be given five minutes, except instead of reading, they would be playing Tetris. After the five minute interruption, participants would then complete the Stroop Task one more time, and their post-test scores would be recorded. Then, demographic information— their grade, age, and gender— would be collected if they consented, and they would then receive a pin as compensation for participating. For the interview portion of the study, participants would be asked a series of questions relating to their gaming habits and their perceived performance in school (See Appendix E). After the interview, participants would have the same demographic information collected, and would also be given a pin as compensation for their participation.

Data Analysis Techniques

        To analyze the experimental data, a Paired T-Test was run to determine statistical significance, using median instead of mean to better account for any outliers in the data. To analyze the interview data, a thematic analysis was utilized. The thematic analysis can be broken down into six steps— becoming familiar with the data by reading it, generating initial codes, generating initial themes, reviewing the themes, naming and defining the themes, and finally writing and interpreting the data, (Braun & Clarke, 2006).

Results

Experiment Findings

        A sample of thirty students from an urban high school in New Jersey were studied, with the group being evenly divided into two groups— the control group, which had an interruption of reading, and the treatment group, which had an interruption of Tetris. Aside from a difference in intervention, every participant completed both a pre-test and a post-test in the conditions. Of the thirty students that participated in the study, most of them were sixteen years old, in eleventh grade, and/or female. Table 1 below shows the sample demographics of the participants for the experiment.

Table 1

Sample Demographics of the Present Study

        Upon completion of the Stroop task, each participant was given a score determining their average speed in the congruent trials, their average speed in the incongruent trials, and a corresponding Stroop score— a score found by subtracting the time it took to respond in congruent trials from the time it took to respond in incongruent trials. This Stroop score is used to determine how concentrated the participant was on the task, with a lower score indicating heightened concentration and vice versa. Figure 1 below shows the Stroop scores of each participant, both in their pre-test and post-test trials.

Figure 1

Stroop Scores Across the Control and Treatment Groups

Note: box and whiskers plot  shows the median value (line), interquartile range (box), and the extent of the data (whiskers above and below at mn/max data points).

        Furthermore, Table 2 shows the median values of the control and treatment groups’ Stroop scores, both for the pre-test and post-test, as well as the 95% Confidence Interval, the t-value of the Paired T-Test, and the p-value.

Table 2

Average Stroop Scores

As shown in Figure 1 and Table 2, the post-test of the treatment group (n = 15) reported the lowest median Stroop score at 37 ms, indicating the highest level of concentration among the other studied instances. On the other hand, the post-test median of the control group (n = 15) reported the highest median Stroop score at 110 ms, indicating the lowest level of concentration of the studied instances. Between the pre-test and post-test, the control group saw an increase in Stroop scores, with the median pre-test score of 80 ms increasing by about 30 ms in the post-test. On the other hand, the treatment group saw a significant decrease between its median pre-test and post-test scores, with the median pre-test score of 63 ms decreasing by just under fifty percent, resulting in a median post-test stroop score of 37 ms. A paired t-test, a test to determine a difference among matched paired groups— such as studies utilizing a pre-test and a post-test— was used to determine if the Stroop scores between the control and treatment groups is due to random chance or not. As seen in Table 2, the p-value— which is produced to determine whether it is likely that the findings are real or random chance— produced is 0.19. A common threshold used to determine if something is statistically significant, warranting further investigation, is 0.5, with the closer the number being to 0.01 signifying even stronger odds of statistical significance. Since this p-value is under the threshold, there is a low likelihood that the difference in Stroop scores among the studied population is due to random chance alone.

Interview Findings

        Of the same population studied for the experiment, approximately eight participants (N = 8) also participated in the interview portion of the study. These participants were asked a few simple questions regarding their perception of their productivity with their schoolwork as well as their peers’ productivity to determine if they felt web-based puzzle games negatively impacted them and others. Table 3 below shows an overview of the codes found throughout the interview data.

Table 3

Frequency of Sub-code Appearances in Participant Interviews

Based on the codes from the interviews from Table 3, the majority of participants felt productive overall when completing their schoolwork, with most of those participants also saying they do not feel negatively impacted by web-based puzzle games, and seldom play them. On the other hand, most of these participants also reported that they feel that their peers are negatively impacted by web-based puzzle games, creating two opposite feelings regarding how web-based puzzle games impact them versus how web-based puzzle games impact others. Among the interviewed participants, half reported most often playing web-based puzzle games in school (n = 4) while the other half reported most often playing web-based puzzle games at home (n = 4).

Discussion

Interpretation of Data

Experimental Findings

        The goal of this study was to determine the effect of web-based puzzle games on the concentration of high school students in completing their schoolwork as well as, in turn, how playing these games over time can impact how productive they perceive themselves to be. The experimental portion of the study was used to assess concentration on a given task— the Stroop Task— which was to completed once as a pre-test, and a second time as a post-test. Between the pre-test and post-test, participants were stopped for five minutes to either read a short excerpt if they were in the control group, or play Tetris for five minutes if they were in the treatment group. The initial hypothesis was that the control group would perform better on the Stroop Task in comparison to the treatment group, showing that there would be more concentration on the task on average when participants did not take a game break. Contrarily, the treatment group reported a significantly lower post-test Stroop score of 37 ms, decreasing by nearly fifty percent from the median pre-test Stroop score of 63 ms, and therefore indicating heightened concentration during the post-test. The control group’s median Stroop score increased from the pre-test to the post-test by just over twenty-five percent— jumping from a median pre-test Stroop score of 80 ms to a median post-test Stroop score of 110 ms— indicating that control participants were not as concentrated on the Stroop Task after five minutes of reading as they were during the pre-test. Upon running a Paired T-Test among the pre-test and post-test groups, their Stroop scores, and whether the participants belonged to the control or the treatment group, a p-value of 0.19 was produced, suggesting moderate confidence that there is a correlation between the pre-test and post-test Stroop scores and whether or not the participants were in the control or treatment group.

These findings support the alternate hypothesis that web-based puzzle games actually aid in concentration on schoolwork, helping students to focus more, and potentially leading them to be more productive in their schoolwork. In turn, this rejects the hypothesis of the study that indulging in web-based puzzle games would result in lessened concentration on schoolwork.

Interview Findings

        Throughout the interviews, the majority of participants reported that they did not often indulge in web-based puzzle games, and that they felt relatively productive in completing their schoolwork. Of these results, there were mixed feelings regarding whether or not each participant felt that web-based puzzle games negatively affected them or not, with five participants saying they did not feel negatively affected, and three participants saying they did. This indicates a potential tendency in high school students who do not often play games to feel productive when it comes to completing their schoolwork; however, whether or not high schoolers tend to feel that web-based puzzle games impact their personal productivity in completing their schoolwork remains ambiguous.

Limitations

        Despite the findings of this study, there are a few potential limitations. While the study is meant to focus on the habits of high school students spanning across grades nine through twelve, the majority of participants— about eighty percent— were in the eleventh grade. This can be attributed to the initial assumption that there would be a larger sample size that spanned across all four grades in a relatively even manner. Considering that each grade has potentially differing concerns and priorities when it comes to their schoolwork— for example, eleventh graders may be more focused on school and prioritize their academics in preparation for college in comparison to freshmen, who may be more focused on adjusting to the new school environment— it is safe to assume that the unequal distribution of participants in each grade may create potential biases in the results.

        Additionally, due to a low response rate, the design of the group had to be changed to accommodate a smaller sample size. Initially, the study was designed to utilize a Solomon four-group design, in which participants could be selected to participate in either a post-test only control or treatment group, or a pre-test post-test control or treatment group. To use this design, a minimum of fifteen participants would have to participate in each group; however, only around forty participants expressed interest in participating in the experimental portion of the study, and of these forty participants, ten of them dropped out of the study, leaving only just enough participants for two groups. As a result, the use of a pre-test could potentially have resulted in a better post-test score, as participants had already completed the Stroop Task once before, and knew what to do the second time around, and with no post-test only experimentation, there is no way to know if the pre-test influenced the post-test results.

        Concerning the interview, self-reported data was used to assess how participants felt in regard to their productivity, and therefore it cannot be assumed that this data is completely accurate. When responding, there is a chance that the interviews were subject to social desirability bias— that the participants did not respond completely truthfully because they wanted to produce more desirable results for the interviewer. While participants were reminded before the beginning of the interview that their responses would be kept confidential and would not impact them in any way regarding academic or extracurricular opportunities, it is not desirable to admit to being unproductive, which could be the reason why most participants reported being productive in the interviews.

Implications for the Community of Practice

        Felt among most high school students is the pressure to perform well in school, maintaining not only a positive academic performance, but also maintaining the positive habits that are associated with such performance. With the stresses that come with school, it can be difficult to stay focused on schoolwork for long periods of time without something that can aid in boosting concentration. While it may be frowned upon by parents, teachers, or maybe even fellow peers to click off of a tab relating to an assignment to play a seemingly mindless web-based puzzle game, with further research and experimentation, web-based puzzle games could make their way into becoming a strategy for maintaining concentration on schoolwork. As students lose focus on their assignments, their work can become sloppy and effortless as they try to push through, believing that by refraining from taking breaks, they’ll prevent themselves from getting sidetracked.

Implications for Future Researchers

While the findings of this study may not be one hundred percent conclusive, they play a role in contributing to the larger question that is researching the impact of web games on completing schoolwork.The moderate confidence in these findings indicates a link between web-based puzzle games and concentration on schoolwork, opening the potential for future studies to examine these effects further not just on web-based puzzle games, but perhaps on other video game genres, as well. Video games are always developing and changing, and their effects on the mind as a whole may not remain consistent over the years, creating a demand for more research on the subject now. Additionally, since high schoolers are such an understudied population, these findings suggest that there is value in examining the effects of web-based games in high schoolers specifically. Therefore, this opens the door for future research to better understand the neglected population.

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