Online gaming motives, family relationships, and personality among Indian youth.

Background: Youth involvement in gaming has become an important concern for mental health professionals due to its significant impact on functionality and relationships. However, the gaming motives and associated family relationships and personality traits in the Indian context are poorly understood. Aim: The study examined problematic online gaming, including Internet gaming disorder in connection to gaming motives and personality, especially as they impact family relationships among Indian youth. Materials and Methods: The study consisted of 179 participants (86 males; 93 females) with the age range of 18-25 years who were involved in Internet gaming in the last 1 year. The subjects were recruited using an online survey. Tools used were brief and included the Gaming Usage Questionnaire, Internet Gaming Disorder Scale-Short-Form, Motivation for Online Gaming Questionnaire UCLA Loneliness Scale, Sheehan Disability Scale, Brief Family Relationships Questionnaire, and MINI International Personality Item Pool. Results: The mean age of the participants was 21.99 ± 2.202 years. A stepwise multivariate regression analysis indicated that escape and competition motives, low cohesion in family relationships, low level of conscientiousness, and low level of intellect/imagination contributed to problematic gaming behaviors. Conclusions: The study established a relationship between gaming motives and both internal and external factors associated with problematic online gaming. Generalizing the findings across a larger youth population would help in developing informed preventive measures to reduce the risk of developing a gaming disorder.

Digital failure: An emerging reason of anger expression among adolescents.

Network connectivity can often lead to positive as well as negative mood states among regular Internet users. Recently, studies have mainly focused on the impact of Internet abuse/addiction on the various aspects of the individual, in terms of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and interpersonal domains. However, one of the issues that is not much reported are the issues about what happens to the children who are not able to access the internet due to connectivity issues. Given this, the current article discusses two cases with negative emotional and behavioral manifestations of increased anger and frustration due to reduced Internet connectivity. This can help draw more research and attention to the need for increased cyber-literacy and incorporation of anger management programs into psychological interventions that address Internet Addiction.

Pathways of migration from gaming to gambling.

Gaming and gambling have been studied in terms of similarity of its manifestations. There is a dearth of empirical-based evidence for the exploration of pathways to understand the shift from gaming to gambling. A 23-year-old male from a nuclear family was assessed using clinical interview for the pathways for shifting from gaming to gambling. The pathways were personality predispositions, maladaptive coping, interpersonal distress, peer pressure, variable reward anticipation, addiction characteristics in the form of craving, loss of control and use despite having consequences. These findings suggest that there is a need to create awareness among young adults about these potential causes related to transition from gaming to gambling.