Effects of Psychological Distress and Coping Resources on Internet Gaming Disorder: Comparison between Chinese and Japanese University Students

Abstract

The high prevalence of Internet gaming disorder (IGD) among Asian youth indicates an urgent need to identify protective factors and examine their consistency across Asian cultures in order to facilitate cost-effective interventions. Based on the transactional theory of stress and coping, this study collected data of 1243 online gamers (45% males; 18–25 years) through an anonymous survey from universities in China and Japan and investigated whether three coping resources (i.e., mindfulness, coping flexibility, and social support) serve to protect Chinese and Japanese youth from the impact of psychological distress on IGD tendency. After adjusting for the measurement non-invariance across samples, we found that Japanese students reported higher levels of IGD tendency and psychological distress than Chinese students. The results of multiple-group SEM analyses showed that, after controlling for other predictors, mindfulness served as the strongest protective factor against IGD across samples. Moreover, the buffering effect of mindfulness on the association between psychological distress and IGD tendency of female (but not male) students was observed. Our findings highlighted the cross-cultural invariance of the impact of psychological distress and coping resources on IGD in Chinese and Japanese youth, which can be considered in future IGD prevention programs.

A three-wave longitudinal study on the underlying metacognitive mechanism between depression and Internet gaming disorder

“…This scale has been applied to various clinical and non-clinical populations in many countries ( Beaufort, De Weert-Van Oene, Buwalda, de Leeuw, & Goudriaan, 2017 ; Bibi, Lin, Zhang, & Margraf, 2020 ; Lee, Lee, & Moon, 2019 ). The Chinese version has also been widely used across populations, including young adults (e.g., Chen, Yu, Su, Tong, & Wu, 2021 ; Lu et al., 2018 ; Wu et al., 2022 ). The depression subscale of DASS-21 showed high internal consistency and good criterion validity (for a review, Lee et al., 2019 ).…”

Impact of Learning Burnout on Mobile Phone Dependence Among Adolescents in Western China Under the “Double Reduction” Policy: The Mediating Role of Social Support

“… 38 Therefore, as a crucial buffer resource, social support can not only alleviate the burnout caused by the imbalance of individual resource allocation, but also help individual avoid problematic Internet behaviors. 39 A meta-analysis also provided direct evidence of the negative association between social support and MPD. 40 An empirical survey of adolescents in Poland has also shown that social support is an important resource for avoiding MPD.…”

Current Status of Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) in Japan: New Lifestyle-Related Disease in Children and Adolescents

“…According to a recent meta-analysis, one in every three IGD patients experienced depression [ 17 ]. Japanese students tend to have a high risk of IGD and physiological stress [ 18 ]. Furthermore, more people in Asian countries are showing behaviors associated with gaming disorder and online addiction amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic [ 19 , 20 ].…”