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Original Article
Beata Pawłowska1, emilia PotemBska2, Jolanta szymańska3
Demographic and family-related predictors of online gaming addiction
in adolescents
Abstract
Introduction. Dependence on the Internet and online games is a growing problem worldwide.
Aim. The aim of this study was to determine the differences between girls and boys as well as between adolescents living in
urban vs. rural areas in regard to prevalence of playing online games, the amount of time devoted to playing games, the severity
of symptoms of online gaming addiction, and preferences for game genres. Also, signicant predictors of online game addiction
in the studied group of young people were identied.
Material and methods. The study involved 827 adolescents aged 14 to 19 years. When it comes to 488 (60.02%) of them,
they lived in the countryside and 325 (39.98%) in a city. The following instruments were used: a sociodemographic questionnaire,
the Online Gaming Addiction Questionnaire and the Disturbed Family Relations Questionnaire, all developed by Pawłowska and
Potembska.
Results. Statistically signicant differences were found between girls and boys and between adolescent urban and rural dwell-
ers in prevalence of playing online games, severity of online gaming addiction symptoms, preferences for specic game genres,
and the amount of time spent playing online games.
Conclusions. 1. Signicantly more boys than girls played online games. Boys devoted more time to playing and had more
severe symptoms of addiction to online games. 2. Adolescent city dwellers spent signicantly more time playing online games,
mainly to relieve boredom and experience new sensations, than young people living in the countryside. 3. Major predictors of
online gaming addiction included male gender, urban residence, domestic violence, mother’s child-raising rules being challenged
by the father, and the child’s sense of responsibility for his/her parents.
Keywords: Internet Gaming Disorder, adolescents, family predictors, demographic predictors.
that from 2.2% to 5% of adolescents in their samples were ad-
dicted to online video games.
It is estimated that the problem of excessive playing of video
games may concern from 1.7% to 11.9% of young people
[6,10-14], depending on the country and the diagnostic criteria
used. Worryingly, this number is on the rise [6,15]. Among the
problems related to pathological video games use, research-
ers point to differences in game preferences between boys
and girls [16,17] and differences in playing time between boys
and girls [13,18,19] and between older and younger game
users [7].
Among the psychological effects of excessive video game
playing, specialists mention disturbed peer-to-peer relation-
ships [20-22], concentration and attention decits [23,24],
school problems and truancy [9,12,25], suicidal ideation
[12,26,27], obsessive behaviour [28] and depressive symp-
toms [18,26,28]. Given these facts, research aimed at identi-
fying the risk factors of online gaming addiction seems to be
topical and consequential.
INTRODUCTION
For several years now, physicians and psychologists have
shown increasing interest in the problems of Internet addiction
and online gaming addiction [1]. In 2013, the American Psy-
chiatric Association (APA) described the criteria for Internet
Gaming Disorder (IGD) in DSM-5 [2]. Müller et al. [3], who
conducted a study of Internet Addictive Behaviours among
European Adolescents (EU NET ADB) on a group of 12,938
individuals aged from 14 to 17 years, found that the criteria
for IGD were met by 1.6% of their respondents and that 5.1%
of the European respondents met the criteria for the risk of
IGD. Lopez-Fernandez et al. [4] estimated that the criteria
for IGD were met by 7.7% of adolescents in Spain and by
14.6% in Great Britain. Porter et al. [5] showed that 8% of
the young people they surveyed excessively played computer
games. Grüsser et al. [6] reported that 12% of online gamers
met the criteria for Internet addiction, and Thomas and Martin
[7], Kuss and Grifths [8] and Jeong and Kim [9] established
DOI: 10.2478/pjph-2018-0002
1 II Department of Psychiatry and Psychiatry Rehabilitation, Medical University of Lublin, Poland
2 Specialist Individual Medical Practice, Kolonia Piotrków, Poland
3 Department of Integrated Paediatric Dentistry, Medical University of Lublin, Poland
10 Pol J Public Health 2018;128(1)
AIM
The aim of this study was to determine the differences be-
tween girls and boys as well as adolescents living in urban vs.
rural areas in regard to prevalence of playing online games,
the amount of time devoted to playing games, the severity of
symptoms of online gaming addiction, and preferences for
game genres. We also wanted to identify signicant predictors
of online game addiction in the studied group of young people.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
The participants were 827 adolescents (525 girls and 288
boys) aged 14-19 years. The mean age of the participants was
17.12 years, SD=1.19 years. All participants were second-
ary-school students from Lublin Province. As many as 488
(60.02%) respondents lived in the country and 325 (39.98%)
in a city.
The following instruments were used in this study:
1. a socio-demographic questionnaire for collecting data on
the participants’ age, gender, education and place of resi-
dence.
2. The Online Gaming Addiction Questionnaire (Kwestionar-
iusz do Badania Uzależnienia od Gier Internetowych, KBU-
GI) designed by Potembska and Pawłowska for assessing
the symptoms of dependence on online games. KBUGI
consists of four scales: Loss, Entertainment and Search for
New Stimuli, Compensation and Escape, and Violence and
Domination [29].
3. The Disturbed Family Relations Questionnaire (Kwestio-
nariusz do Badania Zaburzonych Relacji w Rodzinie, KBZ-
RR II) by Pawłowska, which contains 58 items on seven
scales: Lack of Acceptance and Understanding, Symbiosis,
Alliance with the Mother, Alliance with the Father, Regres-
sion, Role Reversal and Violence [30], is used to determine
abnormal parent-child relationships.
Two independent groups were compared using the χ² test
for nominal variables and student’s t-test for interval variables.
Based on linear forward stepwise regression, demographic and
social (family-related) variables which were important pre-
dictors of online gaming addiction (measured by the global
KBUGI scale) were identied. A p value of 0.05 was deemed
statistically signicant. All data analyses were performed
using STATISTICA PL, version 10.
RESULTS
In the rst stage of the study, the prevalence of online gam-
ing was assessed in the group of adolescent respondents, tak-
ing into account their gender and place of residence. As many
as 631 (83.69%) of the respondents played online games. This
number included signicantly more boys than girls (N=267;
95.02% vs. N=364; 76.96%; χ²=42.13; p=0.001). Signicant-
ly more of the online game players lived in urban areas than
in rural areas (N=258; 87.16% vs. N=366; 81.51%, χ²=4.18,
p=0.04).
The results of student’s t-test showed that boys spent sig-
nicantly more time (hours per week) playing online games
than girls (M=2.66; SD=0.94 vs. M=1.87; SD=0.81; t=12.41;
p=0.001). Young city dwellers devoted signicantly more
time to playing than their peers from the countryside (M=2.25;
SD=0.94 vs. M=2.09; SD=0.94; t=2.28; p=0.02). Boys living
in a city and in the countryside did not differ signicantly with
regard to the amount of time they spent playing online games
(M=2.74; SD=0.96 vs. M=2.63; SD=0.93; t=0.92; p=ns).
By contrast, girls living in a city devoted signicantly more
time to playing online games than those living in the country
(M=2.01; SD=0.83 vs. M=1.77; SD=0.79; t=3.36; p=0.001).
The results of the χ² test, which was used to compare the
number of girls and boys playing specic genres of games,
indicated that boys were signicantly more likely than girls
to play sports games (56.66% vs. 22.50; χ²=97.14; p=0.001),
racing games (54.95% vs. 33.46; χ²=35.96; p=0.001), shooter
games (54.61% vs. 16.82; χ²=127.48; p=0.001), FPP (29.01%
vs. 6.99; χ²=72.31; p=0.001), economic simulation games
(26.62% vs. 8.62; χ²=48.46; p=0.001), military games (war
games) (35.85% vs. 6.99; χ²=112.04; p=0.001), RPG (32.76%
vs. 7.18; χ²=90.44; p=0.001), ghting games and beat ‘em
ups (brawlers) (23.55% vs. 7.79; χ²=40.17; p=0.02), combat
games (17.41% vs. 3.59; χ²=46.19; p=0.001), and MMORPG
(27.65% vs. 5.10; χ²=83.95; p=0.001). Signicantly more girls
than boys played logic games (46.69% vs. 36.86%; χ²=7.43;
p=0.006).
The results of the χ² test showed that young city dwellers
were signicantly more likely than their peers from the country-
side to play action games (48.77% vs. 40.25; χ²=5.74; p=0.02),
adventure games (41.05% vs. 34.29%; χ²=3.81; p=0.05), stra-
tegic-economic games (17.90% vs. 12.96%; χ²=3.73; p=0.05)
and beat ‘em ups (22.22% vs. 14.58%; χ²=7.83; p=0.001).
Signicantly more boys living in urban areas than those
from rural areas played economic simulation games (33.02%
vs. 22.65%; χ²=3.69; p=0.05), and signicantly fewer of the
former played racing games (42.45% vs. 62.98%; χ²=11.40;
p=0.001).
Compared to their peers from the countryside, girls living
in a city were signicantly more likely to play sports games
(26.61% vs. 18.69%; χ²=4.65; p=0.03), action games (44.95%
vs. 33.11% Χ²=7.56; p=0.01); shooter games (22.94% vs.
11.80%; χ²=11.47; p=0.001), adventure games (41.74% vs.
31.80%; χ²=5.46; p=0.02), strategic military games (9.63% vs.
5.25%; χ²=3.72; p=0.05), RPG (10.55% vs. 4.26%; χ²=7.82;
p=0.005), MMORPG (7.80% vs. 3.28%; χ²=5.30; p=0.02),
ghting games and beat ’em ups (26.61% vs. 12.13%; χ²=17.92;
p=0.001), and combat simulations (5.50% vs. 2.30%; χ²=3.74;
p=0.05).
Table 1 shows the results of student’s t-test, which was used
to compare the severity of video gaming addiction symptoms
measured by KBUGI scales in girls and boys.
TABLE 1. Comparison of girls’ and boys’ scores on KBUGI scales.
KBUGI scales Boys Girls t p
M SD M SD
Loss 0.37 0.61 0.13 0.32 5.93 0.001
Entertainment and Search
for New Stimuli 1.07 0.80 0.60 0.65 7.84 0.001
Compensation and Escape 0.40 0.60 0.19 0.38 4.98 0.001
Violence and Domination 0.82 0.93 0.36 0.65 6.97 0.001
KBUGI global score 77.09 76.65 35.70 48.77 7.88 0.001
11Pol J Public Health 2018;128(1)
Boys had signicantly more severe symptoms of video
game addiction measured by KBUGI compared to girls. Boys
were signicantly more likely than girls to reduce the amount
of time they were supposed to spend learning, working, pur-
suing hobbies, and maintaining family relationships in favour
of playing online games. They were also signicantly more
likely to make unsuccessful attempts at cutting down on gam-
ing time and report a constant need to increase the frequency
and amount of gaming. Boys were signicantly more likely
to have learning difculties at school due to playing online
games and also to lie to their families about the amount of time
they had spent playing. Compared to their female counter-
parts, male participants, were more likely to feel anxious when
they did not have access to online games and more often re-
ported that they played games to relieve boredom, boost their
mood, compete with others and experience new sensations.
Boys were much more likely than girls to treat online games
as a way of escaping from conicts and loneliness. Gaming
made them feel more important, more competent, and stronger
than they really were. Boys were signicantly more likely to
choose games in which they could break trafc rules and show
aggressive behaviour marked by violence and power seeking.
Table 2 shows the scores obtained on KBUGI scales by ur-
ban and rural teens who play online games.
In the entire study group, city dwellers, compared to their
peers living in the countryside, were more likely to play online
games to relieve boredom, boost their mood, and experience
joy and new sensations. Girls living in a city had signicant-
ly more severe symptoms of addiction to online games than
those living in the countryside. Girls from urban areas were
signicantly more likely to report that games allowed them
to experience new sensations, feel more important, better and
stronger than they really were, escape from problems, conicts
and loneliness, and express aggression. Male urban and rural
residents did not differ signicantly in their KBUGI scores.
As a nal step of this study, results of linear forward step-
wise regression were used to identify demographic and social
(family-related) variables which were important predictors of
video gaming addiction, as measured by the global KBUGI
scale. The independent variables entered into a linear regres-
sion equation were age and gender of the respondents, their
place of residence and their scores on the Disturbed Family
Relations Questionnaire.
Table 3 shows the results of linear forward stepwise regres-
sion for the dependent variable ‘Global KBUGI Score’.
TABLE 2. Comparison of KBUGI scores obtained by urban and rural
residents.
Entire group
KBUGI scales Rural Urban t p
M SD M SD
Loss 0.22 0.47 0.26 0.50 -0.92 0.360
Entertainment and Search
for New Stimuli 0.75 0.75 0.89 0.76 -2.14 0.033
Compensation and Escape 0.25 0.46 0.31 0.53 -1.35 0.176
Violence and Domination 0.53 0.78 0.62 0.87 -1.33 0.183
KBUGI global score 50.10 65.11 58.78 65.83 -1.56 0.120
Boys
KBUGI Rural Urban t p
M SD M SD
Loss 0.34 0.58 0.40 0.65 -0.78 0.437
Entertainment and Search
for New Stimuli 1.02 0.79 1.17 0.82 -1.41 0.160
Compensation and Escape 0.38 0.58 0.41 0.61 -0.42 0.677
Violence and Domination 0.80 0.90 0.86 1.00 -0.48 0.634
KBUGI global score 73.07 74.90 83.34 78.64 -1.02 0.310
Girls
KBUGI Rural Urban t p
M SD M SD
Loss 0.11 0.30 0.16 0.35 -1.55 0.122
Entertainment and Search
for New Stimuli 0.51 0.62 0.72 0.66 -2.91 0.004
Compensation and Escape 0.14 0.28 0.25 0.47 -2.53 0.012
Violence and Domination 0.27 0.55 0.47 0.75 -2.72 0.007
KBUGI global score 29.30 46.18 43.64 51.20 -2.64 0.009
TABLE 3. Regression results for the dependent variable ‘Global KBUGI
Score’.
Independent
variables R R2F p Beta B t p
Violence 0.34 0.11 60.11 0.001 0.20 16.68 4.32 0.001
Gender 0.45 0.20 49.51 0.001 -0.31 -42.98 -7.76 0.001
Alliance with
the Father 0.48 0.23 22.12 0.001 0.17 15.77 3.46 0.001
Role
Reversal 0.49 0.24 5.10 0.024 0.11 8.92 2.33 0.020
Place of
Residence 0.50 0.25 4.35 0.038 0.08 11.57 2.09 0.038
R=0.50; R2=0.25; Adjusted R2=0.24; F(5,47)=30.99; p<0.001; Std. error of estimate: 58.54
The following factors turned out to be signicant predic-
tors of video game addiction: the demographic factors – male
gender and urban residence, and the family-related factors
– experiences of psychological and physical parental abuse,
taking the father’s side in situations of conict between par-
ents, the father mitigating the mother’s parenting principles
in order to present himself to the child as the “better parent”,
and the child’s belief that he/she is responsible for his/her
parents. Taken together, these variables explained 25% of the
variance in video gaming addiction among the young people
studied. Experiences of violence explained 11% of variance in
the dependent variable, male gender – 9%, alliance with the
father – 3%, sense of responsibility for parents – 1% and urban
residence – 1%.
DISSCUSSION
The results of the statistical analyses showed that 83.69%
of the young people aged from 14 to 19 who took part in the
experiments played online games. Statistically signicant
differences were found between girls and boys and between
adolescent urban and rural dwellers in prevalence of playing
online games, severity of online gaming addiction symptoms
measured by KBUGI, and the amount of time spent playing
online games. In a study of a sample of Polish adolescents,
12 Pol J Public Health 2018;128(1)
Bobrowski [31] found that 74% of third-grade junior high
school (gymnasium) students from Warsaw schools used the
Internet daily and 64% played computer games daily. Boron
and Zyss [32] established that the problem of computer games
concerned 56% of the population sample they studied. Thomas
and Martin [7] reported that among young Australians, 73.6%
of primary school students, 56.7% of secondary school stu-
dents and 26.2% of university students played online games.
In the United States, as many as 88% of Americans between
the ages of 8 and 18 occasionally play computer games [11].
A study conducted in Norway [33] on a group of 3,337 young
people aged between 12 and 18 showed that 63.3% of them
regularly played computer games. Porter et al. [5], based on
an online study of English-speaking participants of Internet
fora for over-14-year-old players from around the world, de-
termined that the problem of pathological online gaming con-
cerned online game acionados, who represented 75.6% of the
surveyed group.
The results of the present study show that there are more
boys than girls playing online games. Boys spend signicantly
more time each day playing online games and have signicant-
ly more severe symptoms of Internet gaming addiction than
girls. Most studies conrm that boys and men spend more time
playing computer games and that they are more likely than
women to meet gaming addiction criteria [13,19]. Dependence
on playing video games is more prevalent among boys (78%)
than girls (40%) [32,34]. According to Poprawa [34], in the
Polish population, there are more men than women who play
online games. German researchers [12] have shown, in a na-
tion-wide study, that 4.7% of German boys are at risk of video
gaming addiction and 3% meet addiction criteria. The prob-
lem of Internet gaming addiction is ten times less severe in
the population of girls compared with the population of boys.
The results obtained in the present study show that signi-
cantly more young online game users live in cities than in the
countryside. City dwellers spend signicantly more time play-
ing online games; they are more likely to play to relieve bore-
dom, boost their mood, and experience new sensations than
people living in the countryside. Women living in cities have
signicantly more severe symptoms of addiction to online
games than their peers from rural areas. A higher prevalence
of online gaming in city dwellers compared to inhabitants of
the countryside was reported by Pawłowska et al. [35] in a
previous study conducted on Polish teenagers of a similar age
group. In those studies, the authors showed that girls living in
cities were more likely to play violent online games than their
peers from the countryside.
The analysis of the types of games played by men and
women revealed that signicantly more men played sports,
racing, shooter, FPP, economic simulation, military, ghting,
and combat games as well as RPGs and MMORPGs, while
women preferred logic games. Signicantly more young city
dwellers than their peers living in the country played action,
adventure, strategic-economic and ghting games. Boys liv-
ing in the country preferred playing racing games, while their
urban counterparts preferred economic simulation games. Sig-
nicantly more girls living in a city than those from the coun-
tryside played sports games, action games, shooter, adventure,
strategic military games, RPG, MMORPG, beat ‘em ups and
combat simulations. Differences in computer game prefer-
ences were also noticed by King and Delfabbro [36], who ob-
served that boys were more likely than girls to choose shooter
games, RPGs and online strategy games, while girls preferred
jigsaw puzzles and simulation games. Funk et al. [37] and
Chiu et al. [38] believe that games with violent content are
more attractive to men, and that the development of addiction
in male gamers is affected by such game attributes as light and
sound effects. In a study by Kuntsche [39], almost half of the
boys and only 20% of the girls surveyed cited a violent game
as their favourite game.
On the basis of regression, we identied the demograph-
ic and family-related factors that were important predictors
of online gaming addiction. Male gender, urban residence,
psychological and physical parental abuse, mitigation of the
mother’s child-raising principles by the father in order to pre-
sent himself to the child as the “better parent”, and the child’s
belief that he/she was responsible for his/her parents alto-
gether explained a quarter of the variance in online gaming
addiction. Many researchers who study the determinants of
video game addiction draw attention to abnormal relationships
in the families of young people who excessively play com-
puter games, disturbed family communication [20,21,38,40]
and parental violence [30,41]. Kwon et al. [22] emphasize
that family relationships are a more important factor in the de-
velopment of computer gaming addiction than peer relation-
ships. In their study of a Korean sample, young people were
found to increase the amount of time they spent playing online
games when they perceived weak ties with their parents, who
showed unconscious hostility towards them. Poorer relation-
ships with peers and family were also a feature of excessive
video game users in a study by Padilla-Walker et al. [20]. Shen
and Williams [21] observed that frequent MMORPG use was
associated with abnormal communication in the family and
children’s sense of loneliness. Litwinowicz [16] found that
physically punished girls preferred shooter games, RPGs and
MMORPGs to other game genres. Chiu et al. [38] showed that
in those families in which parents had better time management
skills and placed a greater emphasis on activity planning and
entertainment, young people had a less tendency to develop
addiction to gaming. Increased social interaction between
parents and children also has a protective effect against the
development of online gaming addiction, but this does not ap-
ply to playing games together [14]. Given the role family rela-
tionships play in the development of online gaming addiction,
preventive programs aimed at protecting teenagers against this
type of addiction should involve parent counseling and psych-
oeducation.
CONCLUSIONS
1. Signicantly more boys than girls play online games. Boys
devote more time to playing and have more severe symp-
toms of addiction to online games.
2. Adolescent city dwellers spend signicantly more time
playing online games, mainly to relieve boredom and ex-
perience new sensations, than young people living in the
countryside.
3. Women living in the city have signicantly more severe
symptoms of addiction to online games than those living in
the countryside.
4. The signicant predictors of online gaming addiction in-
clude male gender, urban residence, domestic violence,
mother’s child-raising rules being challenged by the father,
and the child’s sense of responsibility for his/her parents.
13Pol J Public Health 2018;128(1)
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Corresponding author
Prof. dr hab. Jolanta Szymańska
Department of Integrated Pediatric Dentistry
Medical University of Lublin
58 Lubartowska St., 20-094 Lublin, Poland
E-mail: szymanska.lublin@gmail.com
