Trastorno por juego en Internet. Estudio del fenómeno del abuso de los videojuegos online desde un punto de vista educativo en la adolescenciafunciones y responsabilidades de la escuela

Abstract

The main topic of my Ph D. thesis is the Gaming Disorder (6C51), recently included in the next (11th) revision of the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). As stated in the online ICD-11 draft, “gaming disorder is characterized by a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour (‘digital gaming’ or ‘video-gaming’), which may be online (i.e., over the internet) or offline, manifested by: 1) impaired control over gaming (e.g., onset, frequency, intensity, duration, termination, context); 2) increasing priority given to gaming to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other life interests and daily activities; 3) continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences. The behaviour pattern is of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning. The pattern of gaming behaviour may be continuous or episodic and recurrent. The gaming behaviour and other features are normally evident over a period of at least 12 months in order for a diagnosis to be assigned, although the required duration may be shortened if all diagnostic requirements are met and symptoms are severe” (WHO, 2018). At this moment the inclusion of “gaming disorder” in ICD-11 manual is very controversial also because there are few studies on the subject, supported by a deep investigation on the habits, behaviors and academic performance of the videogamers. However, as reported in an article entitled "Antecedents and Consequences of Game Addiction" (Toker & Baturay, 2016), it can not be denied that the rapid growth of the diffusion of low-cost electronic devices that enable users to access numerous applications, often videogames, allow younger children to play with these instruments at any time and even outside the control of adults. In this article, authors assert that students who have a computer at home have high levels of game addiction; it should be more worrying if we consider the higher availability of newer devices (cellphone, handheld, smartphone, console player etc.); infact students who have personal computers to show significantly higher levels of Internet and computer-game addiction than students who don't have personal computers. Many other studies focused on the negative relationship between severe addictive tendencies and academic performance of video gamers. Anderson and Dill (2000) stated that there is a negative relationship between academic achievement and overall amount of time spent for playing video games. Adolescents who are exposed to greater amounts of video game violence perform more poorly in school (Gentile, Lynch, Linder, & Walsh, 2004). Defined as recreational users, individuals who are exposed to video games frequently perform the most poorly at school (Lieberman, Chaffee, & Roberts, 1988). Lynch, Gentile, Olson, and van Brederode (2001) indicated that exposure to violent video game content particularly has a negative correlation with school performance. Besides the studies indicating the consistent negative relationship of video gaming addiction with academic performance (Hauge & Gentile, 2003; Skoric et al., 2009), video games are found to have a detrimental effect on an individual's GPA and possibly on SAT scores (Anand, 2007). However, Borzekowski and Robinson (2005) found no significant association between the amount of video game play and academic performance. Similarly, Mysirlaki and Paraskeva (2007) found no correlation between high frequency of digital game use and low academic performance in their study. Supporting the same finding, Durkin and Barber (2002) reported that the proportion of time spent by a typical child on video game play is not sufficiently large enough to have any deleterious effect on scholastic performance. Because of these controversial versions of the issue, I would like to conduct an analysis in a scholastic context on pre-adolescent boys so that I can answer some questions, such as: “How can video game addiction affect a student's academic performance?”; “Is there a relationship between the number of hours of play and the academic performance?”; “Is there a correlation between problematic behaviors and the type of videogames?”; “The subjects predisposed to this type of disorder have the same predisposition to other types of addiction?”; “The pathological incidence of this disorder is the same as other similar disorders or the availability of many gaming platforms (consoles, smartphones, tablets etc.) that have children today can pose a threat to their mental health?”.