Game playing is very popular among Hong Kong teenagers. This study aimed to investigate adolescent gaming behavior and addiction at the Internet cafe, and to explore perceived benefits and harms associated with the activity.
Methods
A convenient sample of 13 male high school students aged 12–15 years (mean age = 13.6 years) were interviewed at two Internet cafes. Young’s (Caught in the net, Wiley, New York, 1998) criteria of Internet addiction were modified to assess gaming addiction.
Results
Internet cafes were described as a safe and ideal rendezvous for gamers. The benefits of gaming included fun and satisfaction, fostering social support and teamwork, meeting new friends and becoming sociable, boosting cognitive techniques and intellectual agility, improved responsiveness and quick thinking. Perceived harms of gaming addiction were reduced time and interest in other important activities, poor academic performance, physical harms and emotional distress, disrupted friendship with non-gaming peers, risked family relationship and financial problems. Five interviewees (38.5 %) could be categorized as pathological gamers and two were problem gamers (15.4 %). The psychological factors associated with gaming addiction include low self-esteem, a strong desire for aggressive and exciting experiences, reliance on gaming to kill time and to obtain satisfaction, coping with problems and negative emotions, and obsession with achieving higher rankings in games. The social and environmental risk factors are accessibility to the Internet cafés, aggressive promotional activities at the Internet cafes, peer pressure, family influence and early gaming experiences, perceived parental approval, lack of parental supervision, and poor family relationship.
Conclusions
The study results throw light on prevention programs.
Keywords
GamesAddictionInternetAdolescent studentsPrevention
Background
The worldwide popularity of gaming, especially among adolescents is shocking. Due to technological advancement, video and online games are increasingly attractive and challenging with beautiful graphics, lifelike images, realistic characters and highly sophisticated game systems. Many youngsters enjoy gaming without experiencing any detrimental consequences. However, some teenagers fail to maintain balance between gaming and school work, family responsibilities and social commitments.
Gaming addiction would negatively impact physical and mental health, cognitive, social, academic and occupational functioning. Pathological gamers exhibit addiction symptoms including salience, tolerance, withdrawal, mood modification, losing control, covering up, and risked significant relationships or opportunities (King et al. 2013; Kuss and Griffiths 2012a; Young 1998). Gaming addiction, which is also widely known as pathological gaming in previous studies, is not included as a psychiatric disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (fifth edition) (American Psychiatric Association 2013) but it has been listed as a condition for further study.
There were no reports of game addiction until the 1980’s, although the first commercial games had been produced in the early 1970s (Griffiths et al. 2012). Gaming and addiction have become a health concern when home gaming systems (e.g. the PlayStations), online and computer gaming devises were made widely available to numerous customers at affordable prices. A research literature review indicates 1.7 % to over 10 % of the general samples were pathological gamers (Griffiths et al. 2012). Adolescent gaming studies estimate that 2–16 percent of teenager gamers display signs of gaming addiction (Brunborg et al. 2014; Chiu et al. 2004; Gentile 2009; Gentile et al. 2011; Grusser et al. 2007; Jeong and Kim 2011; Ko et al. 2005; Kuss and Griffiths 2012a, b; Rehbein et al. 2010; Wan and Chiou 2007).