For some though, the social and mental health benefits of playing outweigh these concerns, and Eklund’s research suggests it can also play a key part in our personal development.

As a gaming reporter, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve started a conversation with an adult about their love of a video game.

It usually includes a statement like this: “I know I’m a 40-year-old woman but…”

Or: “I’ll only play Candy Crush when I’m on the bus.”

These caveats often come ahead of a long and detailed discussion about a play session.

If the academics who argue that play needs to be treated more seriously get their way, perhaps this apologetic attitude will change.

Play, in its many weird and wonderful forms, can offer a common ground that brings adults together, not just teenagers.

In Jerusalem, the game that entrepreneur Zaki Djemal turned to was backgammon.

He loves it because it can be “traced back 6,000 years” and is still popular in the streets today.

He also enjoys the thought that the people playing now “still sound the same and look the same” as they did when the first dice were rolled all those generations ago.

Zaki’s been hosting backgammon events in the city since 2016, with people from different religious and political backgrounds.

He says: “There’s something equalising when you think about bringing people together to create a shared experience, to diffuse the existing tensions in a place like Jerusalem.

“It’s an optimal way to create an environment for positive dialogue and communication.”

Backgammon hasn’t brought peace to the Middle East just yet – but it’s an example of how play can be much more than just a way to pass the time.

We know money makes the world go round and there’s an argument that play needs to be taken more seriously, because it can help here, too.

For Samantha Warren, Professor of Organisation Studies at the University of Portsmouth, having a “good old laugh at work seems to be the solution for everything.”

She’s studied a big organisation that chose to introduce playfulness into the workplace.

Her work suggests that being playful can make businesses better with effects such as “reduced absenteeism, greater commitment, more creativity, better team building and general happiness.”

But she also warns that forced fun isn’t the answer.

Warren says it’s a paradox – a fun workplace is a more productive and creative workplace but the fun has to arise from the work itself, not by being part of a mandatory programme.

“It’s about what makes that day enjoyable, my research found that what people want is interesting and fulfilling work and the sense of achieving your goals is what makes work fun,” she explains.

Of course, for some, choosing to play cards, chess or Call of Duty is not about productivity but simply because it’s fun.

Perhaps the stage of life that play can have its profoundest impact is towards the end.

Drew Altschul, a psychologist at the University of Edinburgh, has been following a study that started to research children’s behaviour in Scotland back in the 1940s.

It tracked their thinking skills as they grew older.

He says the research suggests playing games can help preserve brain function: “People who played more games at age 70 had a less steep decline overall in their thinking skills.

“We also looked at reading and writing or playing music, but they didn’t have the same effect, it was only the games.”

For Dr Carrie Ryan, from University College London, it’s not only intellectual play that is of benefit to the older generation.

She is a passionate advocate of bingo, arguing that “the simplicity of it” is the key.

Dr Ryan spent years doing research at a nursing home in California and thinks play has a big impact for those at the end of their lives.

She says of bingo: “You don’t have to know a lot of strategy; you don’t have to memorise tactics and it welcomes newcomers.

“People with dementia can play and even win alongside residents without [the condition] and seeing their reaction to that was really profound.

“Playing bingo was the one time I would see a lot of people who were often hunched over in their wheelchairs enliven, straighten up their backs, laugh, experience smiles and joy in a way they just didn’t do at other times.”

Some look down on bingo as a game of no skill and see it as a “waste of time” according to Dr Ryan, but for her, any form of play that evokes emotions like excitement, anticipation and elation in brains that are struggling to make sense of the world is deserving of more respect.

Play can give those with severe physical and cognitive deterioration – because of old age or illness – moments of real joy, just like they had as children.

So whether you’re sitting down to play Monopoly with the family or embarking on an evening of exploration through a fantasy realm online, think to yourself – is it just a way to pass the time? Or are you getting more out of it than you realised?

Should you, should I, should all of us, take it more seriously?