Thinking Negatively of One’s Social Life May Be Linked to Gaming Addiction
People who believe they have poor social skills and also believe they are pigeonholed into gaming because of those poor skills may exhibit other signs of internet gaming disorder (IGD), a new study finds. This relationship between belief and other symptoms is helpful in identifying who may be at risk for addictive gaming.
The study was published 23 July in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions.
For this study, 543 anonymous gamers (people who played games at least an hour a day) completed an online questionnaire assessing their gaming habits, social anxiety, and how they thought about their own gaming. The authors aimed to discover the finer details behind the previously-reported relationship between interpersonal angst and problematic gaming.
On average, people reported playing online games 25 hours per week, and they varied in the genre of games they played (RPG, RTS, MOBA). Overall, participants whose metacognitions — their thoughts about their own thinking — about gaming were pessimistic or self-deprecating were most likely to exhibit IGD symptoms.
Additionally, social anxiety was most elevated in gamers who reported that they gamed to cope with other issues. On a weaker level, even gamers who thought positively of their gaming reported higher levels of social anxiety than those whose metacognitions were indifferent. In other words, the less one thinks of gaming as an inconsequential leisure activity, the more likely that gaming might be having a damaging influence on their well-being.
Compared to other bodies of scientific literature, the IGD literature is nascent. Only in 2019 did the World Health Organization classify IGD as a diagnosable condition, and so many features of the disorder are still debated. But this study suggests that if you recognize thoughts of strong attachment to your gaming in some way, it might be worth evaluating your relationship with gaming and the rest of your life.
LINK: Social anxiety and Internet gaming disorder: The role of motives and metacognitions
