Problematic mobile game play: A modern pandemic or casual recreational pursuit?

What is it about?

This study (N = 1,950) investigated problematic mobile game play. Adopting Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-style criteria for pathological gambling to identify cases of problematic play, this study compared the mobile gaming habits, preferences, and demographics of problematic and nonproblematic game players. While more research is needed on problematic game play from gaming cultures throughout the world, taken at face value, the findings substantiate claims that casual game play on mobile devices can be viewed as just that, at least for the majority of individuals who play them. For some, however, such gaming can be problematic.

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Why is it important?

Despite extreme cases and claims made about the dangers of video game play and established treatment facilities to combat perceived cases of what has been called “addiction”, there is no recognized diagnosis of this phenomenon within the medical or psychology community; thus no criteria by which to formally identify cases, resulting in a lack of reliable and consistent evidence. To arrive at more dependable measures, various methodologies have been used in recent years to identify problematic video game play, including the DSM-style criteria for pathological gambling. Furthermore, while problematic behavior regarding video games have been studied in numerous countries, few investigations have explicitly addressed problematic play in the context of mobile games. Making this investigation unique in that it is one of few studies to explicitly address problematic video game play in not only a casual game play context, but also games played specifically on the mobile platform.

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