Gaming Addiction Situation among Elementary School Students in Bangkok, Thailand

Currently, game addiction (GA) among Thai youth is increasing. It has been link to a variety of negative consequences that effect education, social interaction and health. Hence, this study aimed to explore game addiction situation and pattern of game playing among elementary school students.

A cross-sectional study was conducted in February and March, 2015 among 295 grade 4–5 students from elementary schools in Bangkok, Thailand. The participants were recruited through a simple random sampling technique. A self-administrated questionnaires under explanation of researchers were used. The questions included following 1) Students characteristics and parents characteristics 2) game consisted of patterns of game playing and game addiction screening test (GAST). Data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics.

Almost students were played game (98%). The prevalence of game addiction based on the GAST score was 7.5%, both boys and girls were similar (7.7%, 7.2%), follow by almost twenty percent were obsesses group (16.6%) while the mass group were normal group (75.9%). The majority usually played online game (62.7%). Most of participants had devices at home (93.6%) and also played game at home(93.6%). More than half (63.4%) used devices in the living room. Among students who play game found that games they usually play were line game (37.7). Students had the average of days spent on gaming 4.73 ± 2.0 (mean ± SD.) days per week and usually spent time to play game in weekend more than weekday (mean ± SD.) 3.59 ± 2.8 and 1.9 ± 1.3 respectively.

The findings emphasized that rising good knowledge and attitude about game and its’ effect and developing self-regulation should be provided among students. Co-ordination between family, school and community would be useful in improving game addiction among youth.