Impact of Digital Games on Adaptive Psychological Functioning of Teen-agers

Abstract

Digital game playing is an extremely popular leisure-time activity with more than two billion users worldwide. In Bangladesh 26.46 million people play various digital games using a mobile phone, computer, tab etc. Among them 7.8% are teenagers and 1.3% are adults. The amount of time spent playing digital games has increased steadily, from 5.1 h/week in 2011 to 6.5 h/week in 2017 and the playing time increasing day by day. Excessive playing of digital games might be addictive which negatively influence many facets of person‟s life especially on teenagers, including personal, school, social, financial, and family relationship etc. This study aims to explore differences in adaptive psychological functioning of adolescents who play digital games, to explore the differences in psychological state and adaptive functioning (GHQ, CASFAS) of teenagers in terms of time spent to play digital games. The study also assess the relationship between playing digital games and school performance, peer relationship, family relationship and home duties/self-care and aims to find out whether any differences between male and female teenagers regarding playing digital games. All the participants filled out three questionnaire; Bangla Game Addiction Scale (GAS: 21-ietm; Begum, Uddin, & Parmita, 2017), the Bangla translated version of Child and Adolescents Social and Adaptive Functioning Scale (CASAFS: 24-item; Spence, Price, Sheffield, & Donovan, 2000), and the Bangla version of General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12; Ilyas & Aeysha, 2002). In total 287 teenagers included in this study from different areas of Bangladesh. The study revealed that almost one third of the teenagers (30.31%), who played digital games, had addiction on digital games and it was found that male teenagers (22.64%) had more digital game addiction than the female (7.67%) teenagers. Teenagers who had addiction on games found that among them 50.57% have evidence of distress and 26.44% have severe problems and iii psychological distress on general health were three times greater than compared with 7.5% have found severe problems and psychological distress who are not addicted on games. Significant negative relationships were found (-.769**) among game addiction and social and adaptive functioning (school performance -.629**, peer relationship -.381**, family relationship -.773**, home duties/self-care -.642**) as well as significant differences found regarding on time spent on it, <1 and 3 to 4 hour, 5 hours and above. Significant positive relationships were (.654**) found among game addiction and general health issues (social dysfunction .514**, anxiety and depression .674**, loss of confidence .529**) that indicates game addiction might be increased social dysfunction, anxiety/depression and loss of confidence. So, it can be said that time spending of playing digital game has very significant role on impacting teenagers‟ social and psychological functioning as well as overall health consequences.