Video game addiction in Turkey: Does it correlate between basic psychological needs and perceived social support?

Abstract

Even though video games are generally appealing to adolescents, sometimes this can be an issue. In this study, the correlation between video game addiction of adolescents and gender, game genres, types of schools attended to and grade levels, basic psychological needs, and the social support perceived are researched. In this study, conducted in the Bağcılar district of Istanbul province in Turkey, 262 female and 271 male students, making a total of 533 participants from various types of high school. The data was collected using the Basic Psychological Needs Scale, the Perceived Social Support Scale, and the Gaming Addiction Scale for Adolescents. For independent samples t-test, a one-way analysis of variance and Pearson correlation coefficient was used for the analysis of the data. According to the results of the study, the levels of game addiction were significantly higher in males than in females, in vocational high schools than in Anatolian or Imam Hatip high schools, and featured online games rather than offline games. It was observed that game addiction affects basic psychological needs and perceived social support significantly negatively.