Joint effects of children’s emotional problems and parental depressive symptoms on the occurrence of internet gaming disorder among children and adolescents: A longitudinal study

Abstract

Background and aimsParental depressive symptoms may aggravate the effects of children’s emotional problems on risks for Internet gaming disorder (IGD). Here we examined the joint effects of children’s emotional problems and parents’ depressive symptoms on the incidence of IGD.MethodsA large prospective, population-based cohort tested potential interactions between children’s emotional problems, parents’ depressive symptoms, and incidence of high risk of IGD (HRIGD). Family dyads (n=2,031) that included children who were non-HRIGD at baseline completed assessments of childhood and parental affective symptomatology. HRIGD was assessed at baseline and 12 months. Relative excess risk due to interaction (RERI) estimated the magnitudes of interactions.ResultsIn terms of risk for the development of IGD, parental depression was 1.8 times greater, children’s emotional problems were 2.9 times greater, and both risk factors together were 6.1 times greater than the background risk, with the last two findings reaching statistical significance. The expected risk for the development of HRIGD was RR=3.7.Discussion and conclusionsChildren’s emotional problems demonstrated a particularly strong relationship with HRIGD. Joint effects of children’s emotional problems and depressive symptoms in parents on the incidence of HRIGD were stronger than the sum of the independent effects of each factor. The findings suggest that combining interventions for the treatment of children’s emotional problems and parents’ depressive symptoms may have extra risk reduction effects on preventing IGD in children and adolescents.

Advances in problematic usage of the internet research – A narrative review by experts from the European network for problematic usage of the internet

“…PUI is associated with psychiatric comorbidities, both in younger and older age samples. ADHD, depression, aggressive behaviours, social anxiety, autism spectrum disorder, and suicidal ideation have been implicated both as candidate predictors and as consequences of PUI [35][36][37][38][39].…”

Financial Hardship and Sleep Quality Among Black American Women With and Without Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

“…The weathering hypothesis contends that accumulated life experiences lead to accelerated physiological aging, or wear and tear on the body, which may compound adverse outcomes (e.g., sleep quality), particularly for high-risk, disadvantaged, populations such as Black women with SLE, as opposed to our healthy comparison group (57). It is also possible that there are additive, or even synergistic, stress effects, where being jointly exposed to financial hardship and the chronic challenges of SLE leads to greater dysregulation in sleep quality (58,59). Finally, threshold effects (60) may also provide another explanation for these findings.…”

Relationship between time spent playing internet gaming apps and behavioral problems, sleep problems, alexithymia, and emotion dysregulations in children: a multicentre study

“…Additionally, adolescents in Singapore [ 50 ] and Germany [ 51 ] were found to have longitudinal correlations between emotional problems and the prevalence of IGD. Korean schoolchildren also showed a stronger correlation between IGD and emotional disorders with follow-up for one year, which was found to be 2.8 times higher than in participants without emotional problems [ 52 ]. IGD may result from attempts to utilize online games to self-regulate, escape, or ease unpleasant emotions [ 53 ].…”