Problematic Internet use and psychosocial well-being among MMO players

  • Authors:

  • Scott Caplan;Dmitri Williams;Nick Yee

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Delaware, USA;University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication, 734 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA;Department of Communication, Stanford University, 450 Serra Mall, Building 120, Stanford, CA 94305, USA

  • Venue:
  • Computers in Human Behavior
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

The current study examined problematic Internet use (PIU) among people who play MMO games and sought to determine whether aspects of the MMO experience are useful predictors of PIU. The study sought to determine whether game-related variables could predict PIU scores after accounting for their relationships with psychosocial well-being. Novel methods allowed us, for the first time, to connect in-game behaviors with survey results of over 4000 MMO players. The results revealed that MMO gaming variables contributed a substantively small, but statistically significant amount of explained variance to PIU scores.