Role of parental relationships in pathological gaming

Abstract

Gaming is becoming a mainstream platform of media entertainment for many youths. However, gaming has negative factors associated with it. It is estimated that about 9% of Singapore youths are pathological gamers. Pathological youth gamers are known to spend more time gaming than non-pathological youth gamers. Possible factors that are associated with the excessive use of video and online games could be pathological gamers' perception of their family environment and the relationship with their parents. Results from this study supported early research, showing that pathological gamers spent significantly more hours gaming than non-pathological gamers. Pathological gamers also had a significantly lower score when measuring their view about their family environment; perceiving their family as less conducive to live in. Parental relationship was inconclusive between pathological and non-pathological gamers. However, youth gamers have better relationship with their mothers than their fathers. Suggested future research could involve the role of parents (with mothers playing a more significant role than fathers) during family counselling to improve pathological youth gamers' perception of their family environment. An improvement in the perception of the family environment could aid in the reduction of pathological gaming habits for youth gamers. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.