This study aims to understand the impact of digital games on the short-term memory of male and female university students, assessing how digital games can impact cognitive performance and contribute to the development or deterioration of cognitive skills in short-term memory. With the increasing presence of digital games in the daily lives of young adults, it has become pertinent to understand how this exposure influences cognitive abilities, such as memory. The study was carried out as part of a larger research project coordinated by Professor Nuno Cravo Barata at the University of Fernando Pessoa. It used an experimental/laboratory, quantitative and cross-sectional approach. The sample consisted of 80 university students aged between 18 and 30 (M= 20,50; SD= 2,01), of whom 48,8% (N= 39) were male and 51,2% (N= 41) female. Tasks based on the Direct Digit Span, Indirect Digit Span and Verbal Span subtests were applied. The data collected from the questionnaires was organized and analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics vs. 29.0 (IBM Corp. released 2022, Armonk, NY, USA: IBM Corp.). The results of this study show that female students generally had higher cognitive performance than males, specifically in the Direct Digit Span stimulus, where the difference was statistically significant (p= 0,001). It was also found that the participants who responded faster obtained good results in the memory tests. In the future, this study contributes to a better understanding of the impact of digital games on cognitive functions, particularly short-term memory, while underlining the complexity of this relationship and the need for multidimensional approaches in contemporary scientific research.