Problematic Gaming Is Associated with Some Health-Related Behaviors Among Finnish Vocational School Students

Abstract

The objective of this work was to examine the connections between problematic digital gaming and various health-related behavior characteristics in a population of vocational school students. Data collection was performed (N = 1335) via an online survey in vocational school units in northern Finland. The survey incorporated the Internet Gaming Disorder Test (IGD10) as well as self-reported measures including questions on socio-demographics, information on the living arrangements of participants, gaming habits, and health-related behaviors. Eightyfour percent (n = 773) of the respondents (an average age of 17.5 years [SD = 4.4]) played digital games regularly. Male gender, daily game use, having no close friends, self-perceived underweight status and monthly drug use were all significantly and positively associated with problematic gaming scores. Engagement in digital game playing was especially associated with participants who lived with a friend or friends or in a blended family structure engagement. These findings have implications for counselors and researchers working on the healthrelated behaviors of vocational school students. Keywords Video games. Gaming disorder. Health Digital game playing is a ubiquitous pastime among youths and adults (Duggan 2015). Technological advances and the rapid increase in Internet access over the past two decades have allowed the digital game industry to greatly expand its appeal, attracting the attention and

Polysubstance Use Is Positively Associated with Gaming Disorder Symptom Severity: A Latent Class Analytical Study

“…Comparison of the latent classes revealed that membership of the class of polysubstance users was positively and mostly-weakly associated with higher levels of GD symptom severity compared to the other classes, and this difference remained significant even after controlling for age, gender, frequency of gaming, and life satisfaction. This pattern is consistent with previous findings, which reported positive (moderate-weak) associations between GD severity and cannabis use and other, unspecific measures of illicit drug use [1,18,40,41]. Similarly, based on a hypothesized U-shaped association between gaming frequency and illicit drug use, a very high level of gaming was positively associated with the use of various types of illicit drugs amongst adolescents, such as marijuana, amphetamines, and MDMA [24].…”

“…However, conflicting findings have been reported in the literature when the association between GD and substance use was analysed amongst adolescents. Some of the studies have reported that higher levels of GD were related to earlier onset of alcohol and cannabis use, higher levels of alcohol consumption, cannabis and other illicit drug use, and elevated rates of problems related to alcohol and illicit drug use amongst adolescents [1,[16][17][18][19][20]. On the other hand, various studies have found non-significant and inconclusive relationships (i.e., associations with opposite directions in a longitudinal design) amongst adolescents between levels of GD and alcohol consumption, cannabis use, and related problems [16,21,22].…”

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“…Recent research has shown that rates of problematic participation in both gambling and video gaming are higher among youth when compared to adults, with 0.2-12.3% reporting problem gambling (PG; Calado, Alexandre, & Griffiths, 2017;Emond & Griffiths, 2020) and 3-10% reporting problem video gaming (PVG; Fam, 2018;Paulus, Ohmann, von Gontard, & Popow, 2018;Stevens, Dorstyn, Delfabbro, & King, 2020). PG and PVG are comorbid with a number of mental health problems including depression, anxiety, impaired sleep, increased substance use and aggression (Lam, 2014;M€ annikk€ o et al, 2020;Mills et al, 2020;Myrseth & Notelaers, 2018). Perhaps unsurprising, both PG and PVG are associated with increased gambling and video gaming frequency, respectively (Carbonneau et al, 2015;Gentile et al, 2011).…”