title: Pathological video-game use among youth ages 8 to 18: a national study.
abstract: Researchers have studied whether some youth are "addicted" to video games, but previous studies have been based on regional convenience samples. Using a national sample, this study gathered information about video-gaming habits and parental involvement in gaming, to determine the percentage of youth who meet clinical-style criteria for pathological gaming. A Harris poll surveyed a randomly selected sample of 1,178 American youth ages 8 to 18. About 8% of video-game players in this sample exhibited pathological patterns of play. Several indicators documented convergent and divergent validity of the results: Pathological gamers spent twice as much time playing as nonpathological gamers and received poorer grades in school; pathological gaming also showed comorbidity with attention problems. Pathological status significantly predicted poorer school performance even after controlling for sex, age, and weekly amount of video-game play. These results confirm that pathological gaming can be measured reliably, that the construct demonstrates validity, and that it is not simply isomorphic with a high amount of play.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Iowa State University and National Institute on Media and the Family, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. dgentile@iastate.edu
authors.forename: Douglas
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gentile
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D016739:Behavior, Addictive / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003625:Data Collection; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D016487:Parenting / Q000523:psychology; D011594:Psychometrics; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States; D018910:Video Games / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data