Description
Abstract
Aim: Over the last few decades researchers have been intrigued by the increasing incidence of Problematic Gaming among adolescents and a large body of recent literature is focused at the amount of time “Gen Z” likes to spend on playing Online Games. However, whether the “Time Spent” on playing Online Games is a significant criteria for classifying gaming as “Problematic” still remains unclear.
Objective: For this purpose, the current investigation attempts to study the association between “Time spent on playing games” and ‘Problematic Gaming” among adolescents.
Methods and Material: The sample comprised of 300 adolescents (150 males and 150 females) in the age range of 14-16 years from various schools of Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula (India). The Problematic Online Gaming Questionnaire-Short Form, POGQ-SF (Papay et al., 2013) was administered and demographic information was collected from the participants using multiple choice questions including time spent on playing online games. Data was analysed using the Pearson Chi-Square test.
Results: Results revealed a significant difference in the Time Spent on playing Online Games between Problematic and Non-Problematic gamers over the Weekend (p<.05). Findings from the current study, thus, could be used heuristically to consider “Time Spent” on playing games as an important criteria for classifying gaming as “Problematic”.
Keywords: Time spent, Problematic Gaming, Adolescents