Digital games have increased rapidly in spread and popularity among children and adolescents. For most, gaming is a positive recreational activity to which some become heavily dedicated, whereas concerns have been raised that some also develop degrees of disordered gaming with serious psychological, social, and behavioral consequences. Our understanding of the processes leading to dedicated and then to problematic gaming and their consequences is limited due to lacking long-term prospective research, but also because theoretical models guiding empirical inquiry predominantly address the main effects of within-person factors. Instead, we propose and test a developmental and differential susceptibility model of the processes leading to dedicated involvement and disordered gaming, and positive or negative consequences of gaming, which also considers gender-specific experiences when gaming and genre effects.
A stratified sample of the 2003 and 2004 birth cohorts in Trondheim have been assessed biennially from age 4 to 18, and we propose to reassess them at 20 years to capture ages when gaming diversifies and intensifies (analytical sample n=1,082). Disordered gaming is captured by a semistructured clinical interview developed by us. Further details on gaming, predictors, and outcomes are assessed by observation (e.g., parent-child interaction), questionnaires, interviews, objective recordings (e.g., accelerometry-recorded sleep and physical activity), and tests (e.g., executive functioning, intelligence) of children and parents during a 4-5 hour session, complemented by teacher ratings and register information. To investigate the importance of experiences when gaming (e.g., flow, identifying with one’s avatar) for the amount of gaming and gaming problems, we draw on a longitudinal study of 627 Australian massive multiplayer gamers.
The concerns about the negative impact of excessive gaming are many and include its effects on reducing physical activity, and possibly also children and adolescents’ athletic self-concept, that is, their belief about their physical abilities in sports and other physical activities. By following children from age eight years to 14 through 4 assessments, we found that increased time spent gaming predicted reduced athletic self-concept two years later among both boys and girls. However, among early adolescent boys, increased gaming predicted reduced physical activity and reduced physical activity predicted more gaming.
Digital games have increased rapidly in spread and popularity among children and adolescents. For most, gaming is a positive recreational activity which some become heavily dedicated to, whereas concerns have been raised that some also develops degrees of disordered gaming with serious psychological, social, and behavioral consequences. Our understanding of the processes leading to dedicated and then to problematic gaming, and their consequences, is limited due to lacking long-term prospective research, but also because theoretical models guiding empirical inquiry predominantly address main effects of within-person factors. Instead, we propose and test a developmental and differential susceptibility model of the processes leading to dedicated involvement and disordered gaming, and positive or negative consequences of gaming, which also considers gender-specific, experiences when gaming, and genre effects.
A stratified sample of the 2003 and 2004 birth cohorts in Trondheim have been assessed biennially from age 4 to 16, and we propose to reassess them at 18-20 years to capture ages when gaming diversify and intensify (analytical sample n=1,092 of 1,250 drawn to participate). Disordered gaming is captured by a semistructured clinical interview developed by us. Further details on gaming, predictors and outcomes are assessed by observation (e.g. parent-child interaction), questionnaires, interviews, objective recordings (e.g. accelerometery-recorded sleep and physical activity), and tests (e.g., executive functioning, intelligence) of children and parents during a 4-5 hour session, complemented by teacher ratings and register information. To investigate the importance of experiences when gaming (e.g., flow, identifying with one’s avatar) for amount of gaming and gaming problems, we draw on a longitudinal study of 627 Australia massive multiplayer gamers. Data will be analyzed by within-person techniques which adjust for all unobserved time-invariant confounding.