Association Between Internet Gaming Disorder and Suicidal Ideation Mediated by Psychosocial Resources and Psychosocial Problems Among Adolescent Internet Gamers in China: Cross-Sectional Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Adolescent internet gaming disorder (IGD) was associated with severe harm, including suicidal ideation. While suicidal ideation was predictive of completed suicides, further research is required to clarify the association between IGD and suicidal ideation among adolescents, as well as the mechanisms involved. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate the understudied association between IGD and suicidal ideation, as well as novel mechanisms associated with it, among Chinese adolescent internet gamers through psychosocial coping resources and psychosocial problems. METHODS: An anonymous, self-administered, cross-sectional survey was conducted among secondary school students who had played internet games in the past year in Guangzhou and Chengdu, China (from October 2019 to January 2020). In total, 1693 adolescent internet gamers were included in this study; the mean age was 13.48 (SD 0.80) years, and 60% (n=1016) were males. IGD was assessed by the 9-item Internet Gaming Disorder Checklist of the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [Fifth Edition]), while a single item assessed suicidal ideation: "Have you ever considered committing suicide in the past 12 months?" Univariate and multivariate logistic regression associations were conducted to test the significance and directions of the potential factors for suicidal ideation. The mediation mechanism was examined by structural equation modeling. RESULTS: Among all participants, the prevalence of IGD and suicidal ideation was 16.95% (287/1693) and 43.06% (729/1693), respectively. IGD cases were 2.42 times more likely than non-IGD cases to report suicidal ideation (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 2.42, 95% CI 1.73-3.37). Other significant factors of suicidal ideation included psychosocial coping resources (resilience and social support, both adjusted OR 0.97, 95% CI 0.96-0.98) and psychosocial problems (social anxiety: adjusted OR 1.07, 95% CI 1.05-1.09; loneliness, adjusted OR 1.13, 95% CI 1.10-1.16). The association between IGD and suicidal ideation was partially mediated by 3 indirect paths, including (1) the 2-step path that IGD reduced psychosocial coping resources, which in turn increased suicidal ideation; (2) the 2-step path that IGD increased psychosocial problems, which in turn increased suicidal ideation; and (3) the 3-step path that IGD reduced psychosocial coping resources which then increased psychosocial problems, which in turn increased suicidal ideation, with effect sizes of 10.7% (indirect effect/total effect: 0.016/0.15), 30.0% (0.05/0.15), and 13.3% (0.02/0.15), respectively. The direct path remained statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: IGD and suicidal ideation were alarmingly prevalent. Evidently and importantly, IGD was a significant risk factor for suicidal ideation. The association was partially explained by psychosocial coping resources of resilience and social support and psychosocial problems of social anxiety and loneliness. Longitudinal studies are needed to confirm the findings. Pilot randomized controlled trials are recommended to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions in reducing suicidal ideation by reducing IGD, improving psychosocial coping resources, and reducing psychosocial problems investigated in this study.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".