Daria J. Kuss

Nottingham Trent University | NTU · Department of Psychology - Cyberpsychology Research Group and International Gaming Research Unit

Background and Objectives As the gaming industry experiences exponential growth, concerns about gaming disorder (GD) also grow. It is crucial to understand the structural features of games that can interact with individual characteristics of gamers to promote GD. This research consolidates the views of an international body of panelists to create a...

Purpose of Review The incorporation of digital technologies and their use in youth’s everyday lives has been increasing rapidly over the past several decades with possible impacts on youth development and mental health. This narrative review aimed to consider how the use of digital technologies may be influencing brain development underlying adapti...

As observed in other mental health difficulties, behavioural addiction is a complex construct with several potential predisposing factors, which include biological factors (e.g., genetic predispositions), psychological factors (e.g., personality traits), and social factors (e.g., family, and social history). One factor that may play a significant r...

Existen pocos estudios transculturales que utilizan análisis longitudinales para explorar el uso problemático de internet (PIU), y apenas existen estudios en población adulta. El presente estudio de seguimiento ha comparado tres observaciones a lo largo de un período de 12 meses, una cada seis meses. Se observó el curso natural y la trayectoria del...

Introduction Considering adverse correlates of problematic use of internet use (PUI), the present study evaluated an intervention aimed at PUI and several putative underpinnings. Methods A randomized controlled trial study investigated the efficacy of emotional working memory training (eWMT) in improving impulsivity, risky decision-making, and cog...

Autogynephilic Persuasive Pornography (AGPP) is a type of pornography that is characterised by its unique autogynephilic and persuasive traits. Autogynephilia refers to the sexual pleasure one derives by imagining themselves as women. Known in the subculture as Sissy Hypno, this type of pornography is an altered mishmash of conventional licensed st...

Smartphones are part of individuals' daily lifestyles, as are smartphone applications such as dating apps. Previous evidence suggests that high engagement in dating applications can be detrimental to some users' wellbeing. However, much of the published research has relied on cross-sectional studies and self-report measures. Therefore, the present...

Background and aims Social network use is widespread, and the study of Instagram seems to have captured more attention in recent years. However, scale development and validation in the field has fallen short of providing sound scales of Instagram motives and usage patterns that consider the uniqueness of Instagram-related behavior. This paper descr...

Background: The present study compared adult usage patterns of online activities, the frequency rate of problematic internet use (PIU), and risk factors (including the psychopathology associated with PIU, i.e., distress and impulsivity) among adults in 15 countries from Europe, America, and Asia. Methods: A total of 5130 adults from Belgium, Fin...

Background: In addition to its potentially harmful physical consequences, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) can cause various negative psychological consequences for individuals. One cohort likely to have been affected is university students who have had to return and study from their home cities due to the physical closures of universities. Obje...

Little is known about whether withdrawal-like symptoms manifest when regular pornography users attempt to abstain from pornography. The present study used a randomized controlled design to examine whether (1) negative abstinence effects that may be potentially reflective of withdrawal-related symptoms manifest when a non-clinical sample of regular...

During the first lockdown, there was an increase in time spent using Social Networking Sites (SNS), which should be studied, as well as problematic SNS use. The present study has three objectives: to evaluate (i) the differences across gender and age and SNS type in increased SNS use, (ii) problematic SNS use during lockdowns, and (iii) the protect...

Background: There are a wide range of negative effects associated with both substance use disorders and behavioural disorders and their co-occurrence. Understanding the way in which at-risk populations (e.g., substance-abstinent users) interact with potentially addictive behaviours (e.g., gaming) and substance use-while navigating life stressors t...

Background: Evidence suggests that gamers can have varying experiences of disordered gaming behaviours due to coping mechanisms and how they can act as risk or protective factor in the development and/or maintenance of disordered behaviours. A particular area of interest is how this may manifest across different countries. Understanding the interpl...

Research findings on inter-relationships between subtypes of Problematic Internet Use with wellbeing, loneliness and Fear of Missing Out are inconsistent. The present study used psychometric assessments on the subtypes, general problematic internet use, problematic smartphone use, problematic social media use, problematic gaming, and problematic po...

The current scientific literature lacks studies on the relationship between problematic internet use (PIU) and procrastination, especially regarding the mediating mechanisms underlying this relationship. The present study examined the association between procrastination and PIU, as well as determining the mediating roles of tolerance for ambiguity,...

This commentary examines the proposal made by Brand et al. (2022) regarding a framework outlining relevant criteria for considering possible behavioural addictions within the current World Health Organisation's International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) category of ‘other specified disorders due to addictive behaviours’. We agree with the fr...

The present study investigated the relationship between problematic video gaming (PVG) and early maladaptive schemas (EMSs) among male and female gamers. Additionally, the present study investigated depression and anxiety as mediators in the relationship between EMSs and PVG. The study comprised 673 videogame players (391 female gamers) aged from 1...

The literature on online gaming has generally focused on male gamers and has been dominated by negative aspects of gaming. The present study addresses the gender gap in this field by exploring experiences of female gamers further by unravelling several positive experiences alongside some potentially harmful tendencies connected to gaming, including...

Fake news and misinformation spread quickly and virulently during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially outpacing the spread of the virus itself across the globe. This study aimed to develop a greater understanding of how individuals make sense of and interact with information they suspect to be fake by exploring perceptions of informati...

Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is considered the ‘gold standard’ in the treatment of addictive disorders related to excessive technology use. However, the cognitive components of problematic internet use are not yet well-known. The aim of the present study was to explore the cognitive components, that according to problematic users, can lead t...

Despite the prominence of 12-step recovery as an approach to addressing compulsive sexual behavior (CSB) worldwide, little is known about the phenomenological experiences of recovery from CSB among individuals who participate in 12-step groups for CSB (known as ‘S’ groups). The present qualitative study used in-depth interviews to explore lived exp...

Internet technology has facilitated the use of a wide variety of different activities and applications in online contexts. One such activity is watching mukbang (i.e., watching videos of "eating broadcasts" where someone eats a large amount of food while interacting with viewers). In the present study, the relationship of problematic mukbang watchi...

Despite the constant growth in the use of online dating sites and mobile dating applications, research examining potential problematic use of online dating has remained scarce. Previous research has obviated problematic use of online dating in favour of users’ personality correlates and scams through online dating services. A systematic review was...

Videogames can often be a source of pleasure and relaxation for many individuals, but they can also lead to disordered and potentially addictive behaviour, which is referred to as Gaming Disorder (GD). The purpose of the present systematic literature review was to explore virtual world avatars and the dynamics of the user-avatar relationship in the...

Ubiquitous access to the internet is provided to students via WiFi to enhance their learning experience. Internet use is central to education, however when overused for distraction it can be problematic and negatively affect students’ academic performance and well-being. A spatial-temporal analysis of actual behaviour on a University WiFi examines...

Interpersonal coordination is a research topic that has attracted considerable attention this last decade both due to a theoretical shift from intra-individual to inter-individual processes and due to the development of new methods for recording and analyzing movements in ecological settings. Encompassing spatiotemporal behavioral matching, interpe...

Problematic gaming has been considered an issue of mental health (e.g., addiction) and 'Gaming Disorder' has been formally recognized in the 11 th revision of the International Classification of Disease. This editorial argues that now is perhaps a good time to shift the focus from 'disorder' to 'gaming'. Learning about the practice of gaming more h...

Sedentary behaviours are highly associated with obesity and other important health outcomes in adolescence. This paper reviews screen time and its role within school-based behavioural interventions targeting adolescents between the years 2007 and 2019. A systematic literature review following PRISMA guidelines was conducted across five major databa...

5th International Congress of Technology Addiction will be held by the Turkish Green Crescent Society on June 2 – June 3, 2021 from 09:00 AM to 6:30 PM (GMT +3) as a virtual conference. It will be o ered through Zoom and the Green Crescent Society’s online platform. Click here for more info: https://kongre.yesilay.org.tr/en/

The outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease is overwhelming resources, economies and countries around the world. Millions of people have been infected and hundreds of thousands have succumbed to the virus. Research regarding the coronavirus pandemic is published every day. However, there is limited discourse regarding societal perception. Th...

Rising prevalence of mental disorders among children and adolescents in the United Kingdom has arguably been associated with increased levels of problematic smartphone use and social media use, rendering the need for health promotion at a school level. However, evidence on how teachers may best support media literacy and emotional wellbeing is lack...

Parenting in the digital age has been characterized as one of the most challenging tasks of the modern era. Parents are ambivalent about their mediating role. However, problematic aspects of adolescent online use have not been adequately addressed in education. The present study investigated parental perceptions of intervention needs within schools...

Evidence suggests that problematic use of gaming, the internet, and social media among adolescents is on the rise, affecting multiple psycho-emotional domains. However, research providing a comprehensive and triangulated stakeholder perspective of perceived harms is lacking. How are adolescent online harms experienced and conceptualized by students...

Background: Distraction is a functional emotion regulation strategy utilized to relieve emotional distress. Within the attention economy perspective, distraction is increasingly associated with digital technology use, performance impairments and interference with higher-order cognitive processes. Research on smartphone distraction and its associati...

Although time perception has mainly been explored through the prospective paradigm, it appears that emotional stimuli lead to an overestimation of time either through an arousing or an attentional effect. Amongst the emotional stimuli, emotional expressions are of inlerest due to their social importance. The purpose of this paper was to systematica...

Background and aims The growing problem of Internet addiction has been acknowledged through the inclusion of Gaming Disorder in the American Psychiatric Association's fifth Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in April 2013. In response to a recent review report on the research published in Europe since the adoption, this review su...

A growing number of individuals using online forums are attempting to abstain from pornography (colloquially termed “rebooting”) due to self-perceived pornography-related problems. The present qualitative study explored phenomenological experiences of abstinence among members of an online “rebooting” forum. A total of 104 abstinence journals by mal...

Background and aims Following the recognition of ‘internet gaming disorder’ (IGD) as a condition requiring further study by the DSM‐5, ‘gaming disorder’ (GD) was officially included as a diagnostic entity by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD‐11). However, the proposed d...

Digital technology allows people to connect and share similar interests across geographical and temporal borders. Two behavioural disorders related to Internet use have been officially recognised as mental health disorders: Gambling Disorder by the American Psychiatric Association and Gaming Disorder by the World Health Organization. The prevalence...

This chapter provides an overview of the current conceptual and methodological challenges in light of gaming disorder recently being included in the ICD-11 (WHO, Gaming disorder, 2018). This is discussed in reference to the DSM-5 (APA, Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. 5th ed. Arlington: American Psychiatric Association, 2013)...

Research exploring the experiences of men who have stalked is lacking, specifically how they construe their reality for stalking episodes. Addressing this absence of experiential expert contribution was the pivotal and timely aim of this research, given interventions for stalking are under-developed. Seven in-depth interviews were conducted with me...

Facebook is an increasingly popular online social media platform for communication, entertainment, and information exchange. Previous studies have shown the relationship between problematic Facebook use (PFU) and mental health problems. Additionally, previous studies have reported associations between maladaptive cognitive schemas and mental health...

Internet-related problems such as excessive internet use, problematic internet use (PIU), and internet addiction, are becoming increasingly studied among Bangladeshi adult students, but there has been little research among adolescents. In Bangladesh, there has been no research examining the role of parental mediation in their children’s internet us...

This commentary paper draws on Swanton et al.'s (2020) paper "Problematic risk-taking involving emerging technologies: A stakeholder framework to minimize harms" to discuss issues pertaining to the challenges and possible risks emerging technologies may pose for the users. It acknowledges technology use is not problematic per se, but for some users...

and Keywords This chapter focuses on the history of four important types of digital technology, includ ing the Internet, digital games (all types of games played electronically), virtual reality, and smartphones (particularly smartphone apps). The authors present a varied and bal anced view of different digital technologies, introducing their histo...

Compromised time control is a variable of interest among disordered gamers because time spent on videogames can directly affect individuals’ lives. Although time perception appears to be closely associated with this phenomenon, previous studies have not systematically found a relationship between time perception and gaming. Therefore, the purpose o...

Although technological addictions, similar to other behavioural addictions, share psychosocial risk factors with substance-related addictions, the studies on the interplay between contextual and personal variables in the prediction of technological addictions are still limited. For this reason, in accordance with Self-determination Theory (SDT), th...

Potential addiction to social media is one of the problems that some people, especially adolescents, are facing. For this reason, many studies have been conducted in this field in recent years. There is no research investigating how empathy is associated with excessive and problematic online social media use, whilst some studies have associated soc...

In the age of surveillance capitalism, the prevailing business model underlying the use of social media applications (“apps”) foresees the exchange of personal data for the allowance to use an online service. Such a data business model comes with many potential negative side effects ranging from violation of privacy issues to election manipulation....

Evidence suggests a growing call for the prevention of excessive smartphone and social media use and the ensuing distraction that arises affecting academic achievement and productivity. A ten-day online randomized controlled trial with the use of smartphone apps, engaging participants in mindfulness exercises, self-monitoring and mood tracking, was...

This chapter provides a brief overview of gaming disorder (GD) and its treatment. There are now over twenty different screens for assessing problematic gaming although relatively few have used nationally representative samples. The prevalence rates in these nationally representative studies have ranged from 1.2 percent to 8.5 percent depending upon...

Smartphones aid the constant accessibility of social media (SM) applications, and these devices and platforms have become a key part of our everyday lives and needs. Previous research has focused on the psychological impact of social media use (SMU) and SM abstinence has only received limited attention. Therefore, employing a combination of an expe...

Internet use-related addiction problems are increasingly being recognized on a European scale due to international health organizations considering gaming addiction. In April 2013, the American Psychiatric Association recognized Internet Gaming Disorder in the fifth Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and in April 2018, the World...

Neurophysiological studies of Gaming Disorder (GD) and internet addiction (IA) are providing important insight into neurocognitive mechanisms underpinning these disorders, which will enable more accurate diagnostic classification. Electroencephalography (EEG) has been widely used to investigate addictive behaviours, and offers advantages of accessi...

Purpose This paper aims to provide instructions on how to implement an adapted version of the standard repertory grid technique (VARGT). The purpose of which is to provide practitioners with a tool, which enables active engagement by participants in research and clinical practice. This tool has been used effectively with people convicted of stalkin...

Purpose This paper outlines researcher–practitioner reflections on the use of a visually adapted repertory grid technique (VARGT) with men convicted of stalking. It draws on and assimilates participant experiences of the VARGT as a research engagement tool. Further, it extends discussion to propose its value as a generic engagement tool for when pe...

A total of 6 billion people worldwide will be using smartphones in 2020 (Jonsson et al., 2017). The devices pose convenient solutions for leisure and work-related activities (Kuss, 2017). However, psychometric and addiction-based guidelines increasingly align smartphone overuse with technological addictions (Billieux et al., 2015). A more holistic...

Observing short-term abstinence effects across potential behavioral addictions is vital for informing understanding about how addiction-related symptoms (withdrawal, craving and relapse) might manifest across these behaviors. Short-term abstinence may also have potential as a clinical intervention for behavioral addictions. This review aimed to syn...

Research focussing on problematic smartphone use has predominantly employed psychometric tests which cannot capture the automatic processes and behaviours associated with problematic use. The present review aimed to identify passive objective measures that have been used or developed to assess problematic smartphone use. A systematic search was con...

There is a long history of using videogames in a therapeutic capacity including rehabilitation for stroke patients, people with traumatic brain injuries, burns victims, wheelchair users, Erb's palsy sufferers, children undergoing chemotherapy, children with muscular dystrophy, autistic children and individuals looking to overcome real-life challeng...

Purpose of Review The playing of videogames has become an everyday occurrence among many adolescents and emerging adults. However, gaming can be problematic and potentially addictive and problematic gamers can experience co-occurring behavioral or substance use-related problems. The aims of the present review were to (i) determine the co-occurrence...

Adolescents actively use social media, which engages them cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally. However, the underlying psychological mechanisms of engagement have not been adequately addressed. The present study examined adolescents’ psychological processes as these develop in their everyday interactions via social media. The sample comprise...

The escalation of social networking sites (SNS) usage has led to much research examining both the positive and negative implications SNS can have on well-being. However, although many studies have investigated the relationship between SNS usage and body image, there remains a paucity of research in regard to SNS usage and body dysmorphic disorder (...

Given the prominent role that smartphones have in everyday life, research in the field has proliferated. From a theoretical perspective, problematic smartphone use (PSPU) is described as a multi-faceted phenomenon entailing a variety of dysfunctional manifestations (e.g., addictive, antisocial and dangerous use). To date, however, there is still a...

Research investigating female gaming has begun to emerge despite gaming being traditionally more popular with males. Research in the 21st century has drawn attention to the role of women in culture, society, and technology, and female gaming is one of the growing phenomena not to have been researched in depth. The aim of the present paper was to re...

The 14-item Compulsive Internet Use Scale (CIUS) is one of the most frequently internationally adapted psychometric instruments developed to assess generalized problematic Internet use. Multiple adaptations of this instrument have led to versions in different languages (e.g., Arabic and French), and different numbers of items (e.g., from 5 to 16 it...

Problematic Internet Use (PIU) has become a concern for public mental health across the globe. However, there are few studies assessing PIU in Bangladesh. The present cross-sectional study estimated the prevalence rate of PIU and its associated risk factors among 405 university students in Bangladesh between June and July 2018. The measures include...

While there is a growing number of studies investigating the determinants of social media addiction, there is a lack of research on examining the importance of such predictors and their inter-correlations and inter-dependences from psychotherapists’ and researchers’ point of views. Hence, utilizing the “Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laborato...

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between adaptive behaviors of 18- to 24-month-old infants and their parents’ use of technology. For this purpose, a survey research method was used. The sample consisted of 116 people who are 58 volunteering married couples with 18- to 24-month-old infants and were registered in family health...