Prevalence of online game addiction among teenagers

Abstract

Background: In human history, the activity of play has ever present from very early childhood. Playing games is a way of relaxation to step out from our daily routine. In recent decades, use of the internet continues to rapidly spread which becomes a part of modern daily life. Adolescents are encouraged to utilize the internet to enhance school performance and competitiveness however; heavy use has several negative consequences. Methodology: A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted among the adolescents' aged between 15-20 years and samples were taken by using two stage cluster sampling. In first stage, schools were randomly selected, in the second stage classes from the selected schools were again selected randomly and then total numbers of students from the selected class were sampled using semi-structured self administered questionnaires. Results: A total of 267 out of 279 questionnaire forms were analyzed, 12 forms were rejected because of being incompletely filled. Out of the 267 students 61.8% were male. Mean age of students was 17.02(± 0.77) years. Males were more addicted to online games than females. The mean time spent on internet was 2.56 (±1.011) hours per day. The Problematic Internet Use Questionnaire (PIUQ) revealed that 55.8% as normal users and 44.2% as addicted users to online games. Conclusion: Online game addiction/Internet addiction is growing problem among students which has psychological, physical, and social impact on student’s life. So it is necessary to develop strategies for prevention of internet addiction which is vital for promoting healthy and safe use of the Internet. Awareness should be created among the students to improve ability to reduce the occurrence of internet addiction behavior promoting their healthy growth.