Why Do Some People Become Addicted to Digital Games More Easily? A Study of Digital Game Addiction from a Psychosocial Health Perspective

an article by Eui Jun Jeong (Konkuk University, Seoul, South Korea), Dan J. Kim (University of North Texas, Denton, USA) and Dong Min Lee (Namseoul University, Seoul, South Korea) published in International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction Volume 33 Issue 3 (2017)

Abstract

Exploring digital game addiction from a psychosocial perspective has gained much attention because digital game addiction is a serious social computing issue related to public health. A number of studies have empirically tested the effects of depression and loneliness on aggression, but few studies have explored the relationships among the psychosocial constructs (i.e., depression, loneliness, and aggression) and their effects on game addiction.

In addition, the mediating role of aggression in digital game addiction has neither been proposed nor empirically tested. Moreover, although the psychological constructs related to game addiction have been proposed as multidimensional concepts and digital game addiction itself has been suggested as a multidimensional construct, few studies have been proposed and conducted using multidimensional constructs.

This study sought to fill these gaps by proposing an integrated model of digital game addiction from a psychosocial health perspective.

In particular, this study had three objectives:

1. to propose a second-order game addiction model addressing the relationships among loneliness, depression, aggression, and game addiction as multidimensional constructs and presenting aggression as a mediator between other psychosocial constructs and game addiction;
2. to empirically validate the proposed model using survey data obtained from actual online game users; and
3. to provide new insights for game policymakers in dealing with the digital game addiction issues.

Based on the empirical findings, the theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed herein.

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