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FRIMEDBIO-Fri prosj.st. med.,helse,biol

Internet Gaming and Psychosocial Development from Childhood to Emerging Adulthood—An Ecological Process Model

Alternative title: Internett gaming og psykososial utvikling fra barndom til tidlig voksenalder: en økologisk prosessmodell

Awarded: NOK 9.6 mill.

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 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 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 diversify and intensify (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 amount of gaming and gaming problems, we draw on a longitudinal study of 627 Australia massive multiplayer gamers.

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.

Funding scheme:

FRIMEDBIO-Fri prosj.st. med.,helse,biol

Funding Sources