User-avatar bond as diagnostic indicator for gaming disorder: A word on the side of caution.

Abstract

In their study, Stavropoulos et al. (2023) capitalized on supervised machine learning and a longitudinal design and reported that the User-Avatar Bond could be accurately employed to detect Gaming Disorder (GD) risk in a community sample of gamers. The authors suggested that the User-Avatar Bond is a "digital phenotype" that could be used as a diagnostic indicator for GD risk. In this commentary, our objectives are twofold: (1) to underscore the conceptual challenges of employing User-Avatar Bond for conceptualizing and diagnosing GD risk, and (2) to expound upon what we perceive as a misguided application of supervised machine learning techniques by the authors from a methodological standpoint.