ABSTRACT
The current study aimed to establish the prevalence of internet gaming disorder (IGD) and its association with demographic characteristics, game genre, game use (time spent on gaming), as well as psychological distress, social phobia and well-being among current online gamers in Singapore. Materials and Methods: A total of 1251 participants aged 13 to 40 years completed the study which was administered as a web survey. The online questionnaire was designed using QuestionPro, and consisted of 8 sections and 105 questions. The 9-item Internet Gaming Disorder Questionnaire was used to establish the prevalence of IGD in the study. A series of logistic regression models were used to examine the associations between IGD, demographic characteristics and game genre, as well as IGD and psychological distress, social phobia and well-being. Results: The prevalence of IGD established using a cutoff of 5 among those who were current online gamers was 17.7%. Multiple logistic regressions revealed that those meeting criteria of IGD were more likely to be older, reported an earlier age of onset of playing online games, had primary and secondary education versus tertiary education, were currently students versus being currently employed and played massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Distress and social anxiety were higher while satisfaction with life was signifi cantly lower among those who met criteria for IGD than those who did not meet the criteria. Conclusion: The prevalence of IGD and its negative consequences in our sample of current online gamers was signifi cant and point towards the need for further clinical studies and innovative interventions to address the problem.
The internet has become indispensable to societies across the world as it continually creates new ways for people to communicate, congregate, and share information. Given the multifaceted ways in which individuals can interact with the internet, there is a growing appreciation that the internet serves different purposes and that these individuals may be quite different from each other in terms of their preferred choice of online activities.
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