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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interrelationships between internet connectedness, online gaming, internet addiction symptoms, and academic performance decrement among the internet-dependent young people in China.

A paper-based survey was conducted among the young clients in one of the earliest and largest internet addiction clinics in China. A total of 594 in-patients (mean age=17.76 y) voluntarily participated in this study.

By adopting the concept of internet connectedness, this study explored the internet use patterns among the young internet addicts, for example, internet café patrons and those who use internet with more goals or higher degree of internet adhesiveness had more internet addiction symptoms. Online gaming was found to play a significant role in the development of internet addiction. As expected, the level of internet addiction is significantly linked to academic performance decrement. Consistent with previous studies, males showed higher degree of internet connectedness and online game usage than females. Noticeably, the moderation effect of online game playing and the mediating effect of internet addiction were also tested.

This research is focussed on the internet-dependent group, thus the generalizability of the results need to be interpreted with caution.

This study provides insight for parents, educators, health professionals, and policy makers regarding treatment and intervention for internet addiction among young people in China.

Since very little research has been done focussing on diagnosed internet-dependent group, this paper scores as a pioneering study of its kind in China.

The purpose of the study is to analyze a sample of 528 published papers over the past 11 years by conducting a bibliometric analysis. The study also aims to provide a consolidated overview of the existing literature on “gaming addiction” and presents the status of research with future directions for researchers who wish to explore and contribute to this rapidly evolving field. The descriptive statistics have been conducted through citation and co-citation analysis.

For the bibliometric analysis, the documents were retrieved from the Scopus database with the help of the Scopus analyzer while the VOS viewer1.6.16 software was used to analyze citations, co-authorship, etc. The literature search strategy was applied across various databases and the articles published between 2010 and December 2021 giving a total of 1,219 articles across all disciplines. Finally, 528 articles were shortlisted through the query restricted to subject areas, namely, business management, psychology, social science and multidisciplinary areas.

IGA has also been recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, as one of the disorders; hence, this certainly calls for focussed efforts to understand the same and control further damage. The number of articles devoted to the study of “gaming addiction” has increased rapidly in recent years. Moreover, this study identifies some of the most influential articles in this area. Finally, this paper highlights the new trends and discusses the future research associated with gaming addiction.

This study focusses on gaming addiction and its trends, related to researchers and country-wise contributions. This is one of the few studies to review the literature on gaming addiction by using citation and co-citation analysis. The main findings of this paper will help academicians and practitioners to improve the body of knowledge on the topic and provide an overview of promising future research avenues.

Internet gaming is a newly emerging area and studies related to gaming addiction are very recent. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is a unique and comprehensive overview of the leading works done in this area.

The paper's aim is to explore the factors that affect the online game addiction and the role that online game addiction plays in the relationship between online satisfaction and loyalty.

A web survey of online game players was conducted, with 1,186 valid responses collected. Structure equation modeling – specifically partial least squares – was used to assess the relationships in the proposed research framework.

The results indicate that perceived playfulness and descriptive norms influence online game addiction. Furthermore, descriptive norms indirectly affect online game addiction through perceived playfulness. Addiction also directly contributes to loyalty and attenuates the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty. This finding partially explains why people remain loyal to an online game despite being dissatisfied.

Online gaming vendors should strive to create amusing game content and to maintain their online game communities in order to enhance players' perceptions of playfulness and the effects of social influences. Also, because satisfaction is the most significant indicator of loyalty, vendors can enhance loyalty by providing better services, such as fraud prevention and the detection of cheating behaviors.

The value of this study is that it reveals the moderating influences of addiction on the satisfaction‐loyalty relationship and factors that contribute to the online game addiction. Moreover, while many past studies focused on addiction's negative effects and on groups considered particularly vulnerable to Internet addiction, this paper extends previous work by investigating the relationship of addiction to other marketing variables and by using a more general population, mostly young adults, as research subjects.

Purpose – To examine video gamers’ attitudes about and perspectives on the controversial topic of video game “addiction.”

Approach – Ethnographic interviews and participant observation with a group of 52 regular video gamers, most also reporting considerable experience with substance use and/or dependence.

Findings – Gamers tended to endorse one of two explanations for video game addiction, either arguing that games operate on the same reward centers in the brain as drugs or that gamers who do become addicted are weak, unintelligent, or actively pursue an addictive state. Several rejected the category of addiction as applied to video gaming due to the lack of withdrawal symptomatology or the confusion of pleasure-seeking with pathology. None offered sociostructural explanations for the phenomenon, despite the relative oversampling of poor and minority participants with low degrees of education.

Research implications – Future research should attend to ideologies of causality and agency among populations affected by behavioral “addictions.”

Practical implications – The perspectives of video gamers themselves are critical to research and advocacy that departs from a position of slightly greater sensitivity, both to the formal dimensions of those games held to be most habit-forming and to the ideological dimensions of video gamers’ thinking about what constitutes “addiction.”

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the predictors of game addiction based on loneliness, motivation and inter-personal competence using the samples of college students recruited from South Korea (n=251).

The authors examined the underlying mechanism of game addiction by testing a moderated mediation model, in which inter-personal competence moderated the mediation model of loneliness, regulatory focus and online game addiction. First, the authors clarified the relationship among loneliness, motivation and inter-personal competence, to understand the influences of loneliness on other variables in this study (mediation test). Second, the authors examined the underlying mechanism of game addiction by testing a moderated mediation model, in which inter-personal competence moderated the mediation model of loneliness, regulatory focus and online game addiction (moderated mediation).

Regulatory focus mediated the effect of loneliness on online game addiction. Moderated mediation analyses using PROCESS confirmed that inter-personal competence significantly buffered the indirect effect of loneliness (through regulatory focus) on online game addiction. The findings indicated that inter-personal competence accounted for significant differences in the mediation models.

This study bridges the gap in the online game addiction literature by explaining how loneliness is associated with online game addiction.

In response to growing concerns over the negative consequences of Internet addiction on adolescents’ mental health, coupled with conflicting results in this literature stream, this meta-analysis sought to (1) examine the association between Internet addiction and depressive symptoms in adolescents, (2) examine the moderating role of Internet freedom across countries, and (3) examine the mediating role of excessive daytime sleepiness.

In total, 52 studies were analyzed using robust variance estimation and meta-analytic structural equation modeling.

There was a significant and moderate association between Internet addiction and depressive symptoms. Furthermore, Internet freedom did not explain heterogeneity in this literature stream before and after controlling for study quality and the percentage of female participants. In support of the displacement hypothesis, this study found that Internet addiction contributes to depressive symptoms through excessive daytime sleepiness (proportion mediated = 17.48%). As the evidence suggests, excessive daytime sleepiness displaces a host of activities beneficial for maintaining mental health. The results were subjected to a battery of robustness checks and the conclusions remain unchanged.

The results underscore the negative consequences of Internet addiction in adolescents. Addressing this issue would involve interventions that promote sleep hygiene and greater offline engagement with peers to alleviate depressive symptoms.

This study utilizes robust meta-analytic techniques to provide the most comprehensive examination of the association between Internet addiction and depressive symptoms in adolescents. The implications intersect with the shared interests of social scientists, health practitioners, and policy makers.

Online gaming is a global phenomenon that can lead to behavioural addiction and affect players’ mental and physical health. This paper aims to integrate the concepts of help-seeking and stages of change to investigate triggers for problem recognition for problematic online gaming that lead to help-seeking behaviour.

Critical Incident Technique method was used to collect a total of 78 critical incidents from a sample of 12 male online gamers who self-identified as having experienced problematic online gaming behaviour.

Six classifications of problem recognition triggers for young male problematic online gamers were identified: self-realisation, negative consequences, negative emotions, social influence, competing priorities and impact on social skills. Results indicate that both positive and negative triggers are important for problem recognition.

Valuable contributions were made to the social marketing literature by presenting an integrated model of help-seeking and stages of change theories, providing new insights into SOC and expanding the understanding of the processes involved in the transition between pre-contemplation and contemplation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore in depth the special context and unique life experience of the online role-playing game and to provide insights regarding an interpretation of the situational context model.

This study uses netnography, online interviews, and the physical travel of researchers to the field for field participation and observations. The combination of netnography and online interviews combines online and offline studies to achieve more consistency in the data collection, analysis, and other processes. In-person participation in observations makes the research more realistic. The combination of these qualitative methods is helpful in achieving a more comprehensive and accurate research process.

The findings of the study can be classified into a three-stage situational context approach, which is presented in the form of propositions. Finally, the insight of the situational context model was developed.

This study only focussed on office workers and students in online role-playing game. Therefore, the samples should be extended to other massively multiplayer online games, including different nationalities and professions for comparative analysis and related studies. Through the expansion of the sample size, a representative and stable cyber model can be established.

The theoretical contribution of this study is to establish an interpretation of the situational context model and eight related propositions. The study revealed the mystery of female online role-playing games.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of alcohol sponsorship-linked advertising through esports upon young gaming audiences and how gaming behaviours affect advertising response.

A cross-sectional survey study was employed to examine the prevalence and nature of alcohol advertising in esports, and the impact of esports participation upon young audiences' consumption and preferences concerning alcohol. Survey data were collected from 976 young Australian gamers aged between 16 and 34 years (58.9% male) using online questionnaires.

Results revealed a vulnerability to alcohol sponsorship and advertising among 25 to 34-year-old and heavy gamer cohorts. As predicted, heavy gamers were more receptive to alcohol advertising in terms of awareness, preference and consumption while gaming than casual gamers.

This research advances theories of consumer behaviour and advertising exposure situated in a new landscape of converging virtual and real experiential marketing. It also provides much-needed evidence to guide marketing strategy to the next-generation audiences and regulation of new and burgeoning digital platforms. Our research also highlights a need for policy to address the burgeoning, largely unregulated nature of online gaming.

This research provides the first empirical evidence of the impacts of alcohol-linked sponsorship in esports upon young playing and streaming audiences. It informs marketing strategy and policy in relation to the rapidly growing, potentially vulnerable online competitive gaming audience.

The research purpose is to investigate the mediating and moderating relationships between smartphone addiction and well-being (i.e. health-related quality of life).

A survey of 236 smartphone users was used to test the research model.

The structural equation modeling analysis results show that smartphone addiction negatively impacts well-being by draining a key personal resource, energy, thus creating strain. The adverse effect of smartphone addiction on users' well-being is found to be more intense when smartphones are used for hedonic purposes.

Through the conservation of resources theory lens, this study increases our understanding of the role of strain in mediating the negative effect of smartphone addiction on well-being. This study also has practical implications. By exploring the mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying when and how smartphone addiction can be detrimental to well-being, interventions can be carried out to mitigate the adverse effects on well-being.

Past research has focused on the antecedents and consequences of smartphone addiction while ignoring the contextual factors of smartphone addiction effects as well as the intervening mechanism through which smartphone addiction impacts well-being. Through the lens of the conservation of resources theory, we close this gap in the literature by providing a better understanding of the mechanism by which smartphone addiction reduces well-being and identifying a relevant contextual factor (i.e. hedonic use) that can worsen the impact of smartphone addiction on well-being.