essay about mobile legends addiction

The Bohol Chronicle

Reporting the truth since 1954

ML addiction: a silent pandemic

Threefold Society

Two years ago, a mother approached me for advice. His teenage son was spending more time at the nearby Internet Café than at his classroom. Mom was called by the teacher. There was no easy solution. The son was not the only one addicted to video games. Before Covid, Internet cafés were already filled with young boys and girls of school age waging war with one another in front of computer screens shouting yawa and leche at each other.

Two days ago, a father shared with me his exasperation. “Dugay na mouli akong anak. Gipasagdan na ang modules. Motubag-tubag na. Gibutangan pa gyug password iyang cellphone. Di kokasud.”

As I have anticipated and written about it before, all the lockdown and new system of education has exacerbated the problem. Millions of people worldwide, young and adult, had been addicted to video games, and there are many. Topping the list is ML. Short for Mobile Legends.

A young man in the United Kingdom went blind for spending 24 hours playing with his gadget. A young man from our own country, Michael Tumugan, was reported to have admitted on Facebook that his addiction to the online game “Mobile Legends: Bang Bang” led to his illness. He died of Stage 4 colon cancer. Tumugan himself confessed that he acquired the disease after he frequently deprived himself of sleep and skipped meals just to play the game. “Kung mababalik lang ang panahon para mapigilan ang pagka kasakit ko nito.Nawalan ako ng disiplina sa katawan.Naa dika ko sa Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, to the point na hindi na ako kumakain at natutulog”, he was quoted to have said.

Sadly, while games are originally intended to help reduce stress and anxiety, it has caused the opposite. Work or school have instead suffered. Both teenagers and adults are spending money to get access to more of such games. They neglect their responsibilities. Nahungog na. Trying to get ahead in the game.

There are various negative effects of playing Mobile Legends. It can be a distraction while performing another important activity. It can adversely affect students’ study habits, grades, and social interaction with others.

Why is ML addictive? It was designed to be addictive. The developers are supposed to have done their job well if many people are addicted to their inventions. Those games are meant to be addictive. The more people will play them, and subsequently buy the upgrades to progress in their game level, the more money for the developers and owners. It is plain business for them, at the expense of public health.

How to stop being addicted? Uninstall. You are not supposed to bring yourcellphones in bed.Nor allow your children to do so.There is a password and you cannot open the gadget? That is the bottom line. If you cannot regulate your kids’ activities, no amount of government interference will matter.

Politicians? They might be afraid to antagonize users. ML (among others) is a hugely popular game. Nowadays, both children and adults own mobile phones filled with games that can occupy their entire day. For sure, Mobile Legends is one of them.

Mobile game addiction is indeed associated with mental health problems, social anxiety, depression, and loneliness. This is especially true for male adolescents who are more likely to experience a higher level of social anxiety, depression, and loneliness after excessive use of mobile gaming. Almost all such games that are made constantly accessible ultimately make children addicted to the game.

Excessive preoccupation, dangers to health, behavioral problems, increased aggression and poor performance. These are the 4 conclusive effects of this silent pandemic. Therapy is badly needed for this. But are parents and authorities paying attention? Again, not just government, but so with business and civil society.

What is a Boholano?

Naunsa na man nang atong migo, bay, journalism is needed now more than ever, talibon city.

Pepe sells fish, but I’m a vegetarian

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Mobile Legends Addiction: How Excessive Gaming Damages You

Dangers of Excessive Gaming

1. Excessive preoccupation. If a person is unable to do anything else other than playing with video games or mobile games, then that’s a red flag. Whether it’s a child or an adult, excessive gaming steals away their time for other more fulfilling and more productive things. If they abandon their old hobbies that don’t involve video games, are constantly preoccupied by the idea of their next gaming session, these can lead to gaming addiction.

2. Dangers to the health. There are many who lose sleep and skip meals in order to play these games. There are also risks for childhood obesity, as well as headaches, backaches, eye-strain, and many other conditions brought by sitting in front of a computer or over a mobile phone for extended periods of time.

3. Relationship problems. Because their attention is always on their games, they may cease to be present for their families and friends. They may not hold conversations with them, or may entirely skip events altogether just to play with their games.

4. Increased aggression. Violent video games can also make the gamers violent, especially the younger ones. These children may develop a detached view of society and humanity and have aggressive thoughts and tendencies when they grow up.

5. Poor performance. Whether it’s in school, at home, at work, or in life in general. Those who are addicted to video games may fail to perform well or meet the tasks required of him.

Video game addiction is a behavioral addiction that can be treated with the right form of therapy. For help, you may call us at 09175098826.

37 Responses to “Mobile Legends Addiction: How Excessive Gaming Damages You”

[…] these game applications have turned out to cause excessive gaming and even gaming addiction. Most of the people, got crazier and addicted to it. Many children, teenagers and even adults […]

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[…] us in the middle of a global pandemic with no end in sight, more people turn to their gadgets. Smart phones, tablets, computers. These provide us all with a convenient means to be entertained and to connect […]

[…] age groups and even economic status. Whether it’s a console, a personal computer, or a mobile device, video game addiction has also become more prevalent now, especially with younger people. There are […]

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[…] these game applications have turned out to cause excessive gaming and even gaming addiction. Most of the people, got crazier and addicted to it. Many children, teenagers and even adults […]

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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

The association between mobile game addiction and depression, social anxiety, and loneliness.

$\nJin-Liang Wang$

1 Center for Mental Health Education, School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China
2 Chongqing Youth and Vocational Technical College, Chongqing, China

As a new type of addictive behaviors and distinct from traditional internet game addiction on desktop computers, mobile game addiction has attracted researchers' attention due to its possible negative effects on mental health issues. However, very few studies have particularly examined the relationship between mobile game addiction and mental health outcomes, due to a lack of specified instrument for measuring this new type of behavioral addiction. In this study, we examined the relationship between mobile game addition and social anxiety, depression, and loneliness among adolescents. We found that mobile game addiction was positively associated with social anxiety, depression, and loneliness. A further analysis on gender difference in the paths from mobile game addiction to these mental health outcomes was examined, and results revealed that male adolescents tend to report more social anxiety when they use mobile game addictively. We also discussed limitations and implications for mental health practice.

With the fast development of mobile technology, many functions of desktop computers have been transferred to mobile devices like ipad and smartphone, which is especially the case for game applications. Mobile video games refer to games played by either single or multi players via online mobile devices. These games are particularly popular when they can be downloaded for free (e.g., “freemium games,” which are free but customers pay for extra features) ( 1 ). The latest China Internet Network Information Center's (CNNIC) report revealed that the growth rate of mobile online game has reached 9.6% and adolescents are the main user group ( 2 ). In comparison with most segments of society, adolescents are more vulnerable to Internet-related addiction because of their psychological and developmental characteristics, the easy access to Internet with a portable device, and the positive expectation of mobile gaming ( 3 ). It has been demonstrated that video game addicts suffered poorer mental health and cognitive functioning, and increased emotional difficulties, such as enhanced depression and anxiety, as well as more social isolation ( 4 ).

Despite this, relatively few studies have examined the relationship between mobile game addiction and mental health outcomes. This is because, so far, no measurement especially designed for mobile game addiction has been developed. In literature, problematic mobile video gaming has been defined as a phenomenon in which users strongly rely on mobile games and cannot help playing them repeatedly over a comparatively long period ( 5 ). Previous studies of Internet gaming disorder (IGD) have mainly focused on traditional online gaming addiction based on a desktop computer. However, recent research has suggested that there were only moderate correlations between the different forms of Internet addiction ( 6 ). In addition, although mobile game addiction has some similarity with traditional desktop computer online game addiction, there are still obvious differences. Specifically, mobile video games are characterized by portability, immediacy, and accessibility ( 7 ), which may increase the risk for addictive behavioral patterns and, thus, more severe mental health problems.

Additionally, most prior studies have treated social anxiety, depression, and loneliness as risk factors for Internet-relevant addiction ( 8 , 9 ), whereas, few studies have examined the alternative direction ( 10 ). A relevant study found that the relative risk for depression in students with Internet addiction after months was 1.5 times higher than that of non-Internet addiction participants, after controlling for potential confounding variables (gender, study burden, age, rural, or urban school). This indicated that Internet relevant addiction may also lead to depression and loneliness ( 11 ). Another reason for conducting the current study was because the relationship between playing video games and psychological adjustment during adolescence is relatively scarce, which is especially true for investigating the association between playing video games and social anxiety among adolescents ( 12 ). Therefore, an investigation on this issue can help us understand how mobile game addiction may hinder adolescents' social development and would provide some guidance for mental health education practice.

Theoretical Framework

Mobile game addiction and depression.

Internet game addiction is characterized by cognitive and emotional deficits. Previous studies have reported the co-occurrence of Internet addition and depression ( 13 , 14 ). In addition, a longitudinal study found that Internet game addition/depression severity at an earlier time positively predicted the depression/Internet game addition severity at a later time, which indicated that a possible bidirectional relationship existed between online gamers' depression symptoms and addiction. People cope with their emotional distress by playing online games, but the excessive use of online games for a long time may separate individuals from real-life relationships, thus causing severer mental health problems, such as depression ( 15 ). Therefore, in this study, we would expect a positive relationship between mobile game addition and depression.

Mobile Game Addition and Loneliness

Loneliness is defined as an unpleasant experience that derives from important deficiencies in a person's network of social relationships ( 16 ). Previous studies have consistently confirmed the connection between loneliness and online game addiction ( 17 , 18 ). Furthermore, loneliness is not only the cause of online gaming addiction but also the consequence; there is a possible reciprocal relationship ( 19 ). Prior research has indicated that, although playing online games may temporarily provide an escape from the negative feelings associated with social deficiencies, excessive gaming does little to facilitate the development or maintenance of real-life relationships. Instead, the substitution for interpersonal interactions in real life may exacerbate the deterioration of existing social relationships, thereby increasing loneliness ( 19 ). Thus, we would expect a positive association between mobile game addiction and loneliness in this study.

Social Anxiety

Social anxiety, which is the most common anxiety disorder in adolescence, is the state of tension or discomfort experienced by individuals in social situations ( 20 ). The investigation on the potential effects of mobile game addiction and adolescence social anxiety is of importance considering that approximately one third of adolescents meet the criteria for an anxiety disorder ( 21 , 22 ). Some literature indicates that Internet addiction, smartphone addiction, and online game addiction were all associated with an individual's social anxiety [e.g., ( 23 )]. Individuals with a serious tendency for online gaming addiction have significantly higher social anxiety levels than those who use online games normally. Lo et al. ( 24 ) investigated the potential effects of online games on the quality of interpersonal relationships and levels of social anxiety. The results indicated that the quality of interpersonal relationships may be undermined and the amount of social anxiety may increase when teenagers spend more time playing online games ( 24 ). In the current study, we would expect a positive association between mobile game addiction and social anxiety.

Gender Difference

Gender has been proposed as an important factor in influencing Internet use and its outcomes regarding mental health (e.g., 8). Evidence has suggested that males have a predilection toward activities that involve explosive action and combat, while females are drawn toward activities that are more social and communication focused ( 25 ). Females received more family supervision, which may prevent them from developing Internet addiction ( 26 ). In a more recent study, female video game addicts displayed significantly more somatic difficulties than male addicts ( 4 ). They further argued that female addicts may be uniquely at risk for negative physical health outcomes and sleep disturbances ( 4 ). Significant gender difference was also revealed on the association between family function and Internet addiction among adolescence ( 27 ). Females showed more negative consequences of its maladaptive mobile phone use ( 28 ). These studies highlighted the need to explore gender differences in mobile game addition and mental health problems further.

Participants and Data Collection Procedure

Data of this study was from the students ( n = 600) enrolled in the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades of a junior high school in Guizhou Province. Letters describing the project were sent home to parents with a consent form inviting participation. Children whose parents provided written informed consent and who themselves gave assent completed the questionnaire in classroom settings. Prior to answering the items, participants read information about the implications of participation and data protection. The information emphasized that participation was completely voluntary and anonymous. Excluding missing or incomplete data, 578 survey responses were collected (mean age = 15 years, SD = 1.05). 56.7% ( n = 328) participants were self-identified as males.

Mobile Game Addiction Scale

This scale was specially developed for the measurement of mobile game addiction and included 11 items ( 29 ). Each item was rated on a Likert-type scale from 1 = completely disagree to 5 = completely agree, with the total scores ranging from 11 to 55. A higher score indicated a severer addition tendency. This scale has shown good construct validity, with χ 2 /df = 2.835, RMSEA = 0.056, 90% CI (0.044, 0.069), SRMR = 0.037, CLI = 0.970, TLI = 0.959, the Cronbach alpha coefficient in the current study was 0.84. Sample items included: “ During the last year, have you felt miserable when you were unable to play mobile video games or played less than usual? ” and “ During the last year, have you played mobile video games so that you would not have to think about annoying things? ”

Depression Scale

The depression subscale from the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) was used to assess the depression symptoms ( 30 ). The scale contains 6 items and each item was rated on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely serious). Higher scores indicate severe depressive symptoms. We did a measurement model analysis, and the scale showed good construct validity, with χ 2 /df = 1.931,RMSEA = 0.040,90% CI(0.000, 0.070),SRMR = 0.020,CFI = 0.994, TLI = 0.989. The Cronbach alpha coefficient in the current study was 0.84. Sample items included: “ You feel sad ” and “ You find everything dull .”

Child Loneliness Scale

The revised version of the Child Loneliness Scale was adopted to evaluate individuals' loneliness ( 31 ). The scale contains 16 items, which were answered using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (always) to 5 (never); higher scores indicate elevated loneliness. Good construct validity was exhibited in the current sample, with χ 2 /df = 2.833, RMSEA = 0.056, 9 % CI(0.048, 0.065), SRMR = 0.0461, CFI = 0.940, TLI = 0.918. The Cronbach alpha coefficient in our sample was 0.86. Sample items included: “ I don't have any friends ” and “ I feel lonely .”

Child Social Anxiety Scale

The modified version of the Child Social Anxiety Scale was used to assess participants' social anxiety ( 32 ). The term “children” in the original scale was changed to “classmate” in the current version. The scale contains 10 items and each item was rated using a 3-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 = never to 3 = always. Higher scores indicate higher levels of social anxiety. The scale has been proved to have good construct validity in the current study, with χ 2 / df = 2.872, RMSEA = 0.057, 90% CI(0.044, 0.071), SRMR = 0.041, CFI = 0.951, TLI = 0.931, and the Cronbach alpha coefficient in our sample was 0.80. Sample items included: “ I think my classmates make fun of me ” and “ I'm afraid other students won't like me .”

Descriptive Statistics and Zero-Order Correlations Among the Study Variables

Table 1 shows the descriptive results and zero-order correlations among the study variables. Mobile addiction was positively correlated with depression, loneliness, and social anxiety, with the correlations ranging from 0.18 to 0.46 ( p s < 0.01).

Table 1 . Descriptive results and zero-order correlations among the study variables.

Structural Equation Modeling on the Relationship Between Mobile Game Addiction, Depression, Social Anxiety, and Loneliness

Using Amos 22.0, we conducted a structural equation analysis to examine the association between mobile game addiction, depression, social anxiety, and loneliness.

Several underlying statistical assumptions for multiple regression analysis were examined before running the structural modeling. The assumption of homoscedasticity was checked using the Levene's Test for Equality of Variances ( 33 ). The test ensured no significant differences in the variance of the three dependent variables of social anxiety, depression, and loneliness across groups defined by mobile gaming addiction ( p > 0.05 for all cases). Thus, the assumption of homoscedasticity was not violated ( 34 ). Second, the skewness values for all variables ranged from 0.25 to 0.82 and the kurtosis values ranged from 0.27 to 0.30, which are within the acceptable range of −1 to +1 for normality ( 35 ). Thus, the violation of the normality assumption was not present in the sample data. Thirdly, the assumption of independence of residuals was confirmed by the calculation of the Durbin–Watson statistics for the dependent variables of depression (= 1.36), social anxiety (= 1.76), and loneliness (= 1.71), which are within the acceptable range of 1.5–2.5 for independence ( 36 ). Lastly, multi-collinearity was evaluated through the assessment of zero-order correlations among selected measured constructs, as calculated in Table 1 . Harris and Hagger ( 37 ) noted that multicolline arity is not a serious issue if none of the correlation coefficients between variables exceeds 0.70. It is apparent that pair-wise bivariate associations between the study variables were not highly correlated with each other. Accordingly, multi-collinearity was dismissed from being a major concern in the present study ( 38 ). To conclude, the sample data were judged to meet the criteria for further analysis.

Model fit was assessed by considering multiple criteria: a Chi-square/df < 5 a root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) of <0.08 and a comparative fit index (CFI) and a Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) of >0.90 ( 39 ). The model fit was considered acceptable when most abovementioned criteria were satisfied. Our results showed that the model fit to the data well, with χ 2 /df = 3.475, RMSEA = 0.065, 90% CI (0.06, 0.07), CLI = 0.937, TLI = 0.921. Mobile game addiction can explain 10% variance of depression, 6% variance of social anxiety, and 4% variance of loneliness. The standardized beta coefficients are shown in Figure 1 . Mobile game addiction was positively related to depression, social anxiety, and loneliness, with β = 0.31, p < 0.001, β = 0.25, p < 0.001, and β = 0.21, p < 0.001, respectively.

Figure 1 . The Structural Modeling on the relation between mobile game addiction and depression, social anxiety, and loneliness. *** p < 0.01.

Considering that gender was proposed as a variable that may moderate the relationship between mobile game addiction and mental health outcomes, the moderating effect of gender was tested. We created a multi-group model in AMOS to test the differences between males and females on the paths between mobile game addiction and its outcomes. The results show that significant gender differences exist considering the relationship between mobile game addiction and social anxiety. Male adolescents who used mobile game additively reported higher levels of social anxiety (β = 0.118, p < 0.001), depression (β = 0.280, p < 0.001), and loneliness (β = 0.311, p < 0.001), compared with female adolescents (β = 0.077, p < 0.001; β = 0.17, p < 0.01; and β = 0.16, p < 0.05, respectively; see Table 2 for details).

Table 2 . Multi-group (male and female) analysis on the relationship among mobile game addiction and depression, social anxiety, and loneliness.

The goal of this study was to examine the associations between mobile game addiction and depression, loneliness, social anxiety, and the potential gender difference in these associations were also investigated. The results revealed that adolescent with mobile game addiction had higher self-reported depression, social anxiety and loneliness, which have supported our three hypotheses regarding the association between mobile game addiction and depression, social anxiety, and loneliness. Further, gender difference was observed in the path between mobile game addiction and social anxiety, with male adolescents having a stronger association between mobile game addiction and social anxiety. This indicates that male adolescents may experience more social anxieties if they use mobile game addictively, compared with female adolescents.

As we expected, mobile game addiction was positively associated with depression, anxiety, and loneliness, which have supported all of our three hypotheses and are in line with prior findings. Literature has consistently shown that video game addicts reported more anxiety, depression, lower positive affect and psychological well-being. Literature has also shown that Internet addictions are related to poorer emotional health, in particular depression and anxiety ( 40 , 41 ). For instance, Whang et al. ( 41 ) found a significant association between degree of Internet addiction and loneliness and depression. Adolescents with high Internet use exhibited more psychopathology, as revealed by the Brief Symptoms Inventory (BSI, a reduced version of the Symptoms Checklist, SCL-90) compared with those with low those use ( 42 ). In a recent study, ( 4 ) reported that young adults addicted to video games showed increased depression and anxiety, and felt more socially isolated. The link between mobile game addiction and mental health may be due to the social isolation resulting from spending too much time gaming, which in turn leads to undermined psychological well-being ( 43 ). Our results regarding the association between mobile game addiction and loneliness are also in line with the displacement hypothesis in terms of Internet use, which argues that digital device users have spent most time in online settings, rather than offline, and their existing relationships have suffered as a result ( 44 ).

We also expected a gender difference considering the association between mobile game addiction and mental health outcomes. We found that males who were addicted to mobile games tended to suffer more social anxiety, loneliness, and social anxiety, compared with females. This finding is line with prior research (e.g., 24). Gender difference on social anxiety and loneliness has been widely reported in literature. Compared with female adolescents, male adolescents tended to lack social skills, were more socially withdrawn and disclosed less about themselves in offline communication settings ( 45 ). This is also a reason why males are more likely to be attracted to a virtual world like computer games since the online world is more comfortable and can offer more sense of security ( 46 ). This would further lead them to be more social isolated and experience more social anxiety, loneliness, and depression due to the lack of social bond in offline settings.

Limitations and future directions

The results of this study should be viewed in light of its limitations. First, this study is a cross-sectional design. Thus, we could not determine a causal link between study variables. Future investigations should adopt an experimental design to establish the causal relationship between variables, or a longitudinal design to examine the prospective relationship among the variables. As prior studies indicated, the association between mobile game addiction and mental health problems might be reciprocal. Second, the sample is a homogeneous group of students from a middle school in China. Whether the results can be generalized to all adolescents is a question for future research.

Despite the limitations, our study has examined the association between mobile game addiction and depression, social anxiety, and loneliness, based on an adolescent sample. The results indicated that mobile game addiction was positively related to these mental health problems, and this is especially true for male adolescents as they are more likely to experience a higher level of social anxiety, depression, and loneliness after excessive use of mobile gaming. Therefore, mental health educators and practicers should be aware of the negative effects caused by addictive mobile gaming, as this is such a common phenomenon today. Specifically, attention should be given to male adolescents who are addicted to mobile gaming, as they may suffer more social anxiety.

Data Availability

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Southwest University's Human Research Ethics Committee. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants' legal guardian/next of kin.

Author Contributions

J-LW drafted the initial version of the manuscript and responded to the reviewers' comments. J-RS analyzed the data. H-ZW collected the data and provided the comments.

This study has been supported by the Major Cultivating Project in Southwest University (No. SWU1809006).

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords: mobile game addiction, social anxiety, depression, loneliness, adolescents

Citation: Wang J-L, Sheng J-R and Wang H-Z (2019) The Association Between Mobile Game Addiction and Depression, Social Anxiety, and Loneliness. Front. Public Health 7:247. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2019.00247

Received: 04 June 2019; Accepted: 16 August 2019; Published: 06 September 2019.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2019 Wang, Sheng and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Jin-Liang Wang, wjl200789@163.com

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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FACTORS WHY MILLENNIALS ARE ADDICTED IN PLAYING MOBILE LEGENDS

2018, Tibagan boys

Related Papers

International Journal of Research Publication and Reviews

IJRPR JOURNAL

The Covid 19 pandemic has heightened the use of mobile phones among learners all over the globe. Hence, the students who got involved and soon got addicted into playing mobile games whether these are pre-installed, offline, or online have also increased significantly. This addiction may be associated to learners' academic performance especially in the implementation of the new learning modality in the School Year 2021-2022. To highlight this issue, the researcher conducted a study describing and revealing the experiences of the two junior high school students, who were habitual mobile legend gamers, and the impact of their addiction to learning module accomplishment and submission. The researcher utilized judgmental sampling technique in this study which qualified the two participants among many of those who met the requirements because of the significant changes on their academic performance relevant to excessive playing of Mobile Legends. Analytic strategy and descriptive approach by Yin (2014) as also used in the study of Cadosales (2018), was employed to gather and analyze data focusing on the common themes emerging from their stories as they battle on the adverse effect of playing ML while accomplishing LM. A narrative story was created through inquiries and storytelling based on the transcribed interview responses. From the two Mobile Legend gamers' revelation of the cases, themes based on their highlighted stories were described, analyzed, and compared to Mobile Legend's heroes and characteristics. The findings of the study affirmed that stress, depression, isolation, and lack of actual communication and socialization lead the two cases to venture in engaging t hemselves into playing mobile legends. Moreover, their academic performance was badly affected when associated to excessive and unrestrained playing of Mobile Legends.

International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research

HELEN PERLAS , Helmar CApablanca EA

For millennials, engaging in games on their mobile devices has evolved into an intriguing leisure activity. With the diversity of online, free apps available, mobile games are a highly helpful learning tool in the educational setting. It is a determinant of how adolescents and young adults develop in their day-today lives. The paper will examine the real-world experiences of mobile gamers and draw themes from their narratives. The information was acquired using the method of qualitative research through focus group discussions, interviews, and observation. The five participants in this study met the following requirements: played at least three distinct mobile games and spent a maximum of 10 hours per day playing mobile games.

Mustafa Özkan

Mobile phones is one of the most preferred digital devices in constituting a large part of our daily lives in particular. Using of the mobile phones with technical innovations has become more common for this group named as generation Z. Creating a new and different social environment with sharing the private life in social websites like as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. has reach a level that is closer to their social life than real life. It has been believed that smart phone usage especially in these generations has become an addiction and is considered that this situation has an effect to great extent on their social life and psychology. The aim of the study is to analyze mobile addiction of generation Z and how this addiction impacts in their social and individual lifes. In this study, the determination of the importance of factors that affect the mobile dependence of the generation Z and whether has an impact of the generations Z's social lifes or not, was evaluated by creating a new scale and utilizing a variety of scales in literature. This research was done with university students aged 18-23 is composed of a sample consisting of 276 persons.

IRJET Journal

In today's world we can see all peoples are playing games on their mobile. Gaming application have become one of the most popular entertainment feature in smart phones. It is good to play games as a hobby. But what if the people go too far with their hobby. Is it points towards an addiction? This research is to analyze the people who plays game are addicted to games or not. The data is collected using questionnaires. To identify who plays games more (male or female), which age group persons plays game more, how much time they spends to play game,..etc.

James Ryan Paredes

Online video games are video games played online via a mobile device, and are particularly popular when downloaded for free (e.g., “freemium game” – games played for free and where customers can pay for extra features), and can be single-player or multiplayer games (Su, Chiang, Lee, & Chang, 2016). It is also one of the main entertainment features on smartphones, and this could be potentially problematic in terms of dependent use among the students. Moreover, the purpose of this study is to enlighten the students and increase consciousness regarding the effect of mobile game addiction and to advocate prevention towards this problem. Comprehending the gathered data, the researcher decided to conduct this study to find out the effect on the students. In addition, it also aims to suggest possible solutions and preventions to the rapidly increasing of too much usage of online video games that may lead to addiction.

Mark D Griffiths

The playing of videogames can be fun and entertaining, but research has consistently shown that a small minority of players experience problematic gaming. Most research to date has focused on online gaming via personal computers and laptops. However, gaming has evolved both in the games that are played and the platforms on which they can be played. One of the biggest growth areas has been in the area of smartphone gaming. The present study investigated the reasons for perceived smartphone game addiction by the users themselves, and how these perceptions compared across different smartphone game genres by analyzing reviews of smartphone games by the users themselves. The data comprised 25,200 game reviews of 140 smartphone games across 14 game genres to examine the most influential factors in addictive smartphone gaming by the individuals that play such games. Game reviews which were written under the heading of 'addiction' or 'addictive' were content analyzed to understand the most important variables associated with what makes a game 'addictive' from a player perspective. Results indicated nine keywords (or their synonyms) to be strongly associated with smartphone games classed as Baddictive^ (i.e., 'challenging,' 'entertainment,' 'friends and family,' 'gameplay,' 'creative,' 'graphics/animation,' 'fun,' 'free from advertisement,' and 'time killer'). The most common keyword associated with a smartphone game being 'addictive' was 'challenging' (n = 5636). The 14 genres clustered into five different categories based upon the identified nine keywords. Given the fact that there has been little published to date in the area of addictive smartphone gaming, the present paper is of existential value.

siti aisyah ramli

Int. J. of Aquatic Science

Bharath Yuvaraj

Global Mental Health

Md. Moyazzem Hossain

Background Nowadays, the youth are more engaging with their more advanced smartphones having high-quality graphics and gaming features. However, existing literature depicts that adolescents suffer from several forms of psychological problems including mental health, depression, loneliness, insomnia and low self-control due to mobile game addiction. Therefore, this study aims to find the prevalence and motivating factors for mobile game addiction among university students of Bangladesh. Methods A cross-sectional survey was carried out to collect the required information from 1125 students of three universities in Bangladesh. Descriptive statistics, χ2 test and ordinal regression model are employed to meet the objective of this study. Results The findings reveal that male students are more likely to show addictive behaviours than their counterparts in the context of mobile game addiction. The results depict that loneliness, duration of using smartphones and playing mobile games, and s...

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Previous research shows that fewer female players participate in competitive games than male players. However, it has been reported that there are more female than male players in King of Glory (KoG), one of the most popular multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games on the mobile platform in China. This study aims to investigate how KoG captures the interest of female players at a higher level than other games. We compared the game design of KoG with League of Legends (LoL), one of the most popular MOBA games on the PC platform. We followed up with a semi-structured interview study with 20 participants about their gameplay experiences on the two different platforms. Our analysis indicates that mobility, sociability, and lower barrier to entry are the main factors that drove female players to participate in KoG.

Why the addiction to Mobile Legends

Miguel Moreno in Hobbies and Interests

Oct 22, 2020 • 2 min Read

The year 2003 saw the rise of Defense of the Ancients , popularly known as DOTA, the first-ever multiplayer online battle arena — or MOBA for the clueless. DOTA pitted real players against each other in a test of skill on one map.

Anyone who ever visited a computer shop can remember the avid fanatics of DOTA; some of the players were still students, who considered the game as a reward for lasting another day in school. These students would come into the shops with their friends, and enjoy the hours in between dismissal time and having to go back home.

However, as MOBA gamers grew up, time also caught up, and dedicating hours to playing (there will always be “one more game”) becomes much more difficult — you’d have to squeeze in that precious hour in between commuting, preparing for work the next day, or even preparing for your kids’ next day in school!

MOBA games are known for their competitiveness. Like a typical sports game, it pits two opposing teams against each other and bases its success on who can achieve their goal the fastest. For basketball, it’s to have the most points at the end of the four quarters. For DOTA, the goal is to destroy the “nexus” of the enemy team before they destroy yours. Simply put, the main magnetic effect of the game is to see who is better than the other.

Eventually, the advent of smartphones allowed the influx of mobile games or apps: these portable pastimes help ease the lulls between schedules, may it be the student waiting for his next class, or the employee on his 15-minute break. Then came a portable MOBA app — Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB).

MLBB has that familiar flavor of skillful competition, packed into the convenience of mobile play. Considering that an average game only takes 10 to 15 minutes, gamers may enjoy this pastime in between their lunch breaks, commute hours, and any moment where they could muster a few minutes.

Gone are the days where these same students and employees had to set aside some hours after work to be able to enjoy playing DOTA. Why would they when MLBB is just a phone click away? In addition, a quick personal message to their online friends meant having a reliable team to play with. All it takes now is a decent phone in your pocket, and a comfortable spot to sit on.

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Proceedings of the First International Conference on Administration Science (ICAS 2019)

Interpersonal Communications of Parents and Adolescents in Tangerang to Overcome Mobile Legend Game Online Addictions

Mobile Legend is an online game favored by adolescents, they like this game to relieve stress. If it is overplayed the players will be addicted like they don’t care about the people around them. This was experienced by Faculty of Communication Sciences students. Parents' role is needed through interpersonal communication to overcome these addictive behaviors. Objective of the Study is 1) to find out about interpersonal communication appliated between parents with students at FIKOM-UBL to overcome Mobile Legend addiction; 2). to find out the interpersonal communication of parents with students of the in overcome Mobile Legend addiction; 2.) To find out the barriers to interpersonal communication; 3). To find out a solution to overcome the obstacles of interpersonal communication between parents and students in overcome Mobile Legend addiction. Review of literature is related to interpersonal communication concept, game online and addiction behavior. Research methodology is case study, this research uses qualitative approach. Research finding is 1). Fikom students are addicted to mobile legend, indicated by playing game from night to morning, lazy to go to college, do not like face to face interactions, decreased social skills; 2). Parents try to hear the reason and explanation of the informant, also give advice; 3). Barriers to interpersonal communication, parents sometimes use their perspectives and ways of thinking; 4). Communication barriers are overcome by a sense of empathy from parents to informants.

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David Wallace-Wells

Are smartphones driving our teens to depression.

By David Wallace-Wells

Opinion Writer

Here is a story. In 2007, Apple released the iPhone, initiating the smartphone revolution that would quickly transform the world. In 2010, it added a front-facing camera, helping shift the social-media landscape toward images, especially selfies. Partly as a result, in the five years that followed, the nature of childhood and especially adolescence was fundamentally changed — a “great rewiring,” in the words of the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt — such that between 2010 and 2015 mental health and well-being plummeted and suffering and despair exploded, particularly among teenage girls.

For young women, rates of hospitalization for nonfatal self-harm in the United States, which had bottomed out in 2009, started to rise again, according to data reported to the C.D.C., taking a leap beginning in 2012 and another beginning in 2016, and producing , over about a decade, an alarming 48 percent increase in such emergency room visits among American girls ages 15 to 19 and a shocking 188 percent increase among girls ages 10 to14.

Here is another story. In 2011, as part of the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a new set of guidelines that recommended that teenage girls should be screened annually for depression by their primary care physicians and that same year required that insurance providers cover such screenings in full. In 2015, H.H.S. finally mandated a coding change, proposed by the World Health Organization almost two decades before, that required hospitals to record whether an injury was self-inflicted or accidental — and which seemingly overnight nearly doubled rates for self-harm across all demographic groups. Soon thereafter, the coding of suicidal ideation was also updated. The effect of these bureaucratic changes on hospitalization data presumably varied from place to place. But in one place where it has been studied systematically, New Jersey, where 90 percent of children had health coverage even before the A.C.A., researchers have found that the changes explain nearly all of the state’s apparent upward trend in suicide-related hospital visits, turning what were “essentially flat” trendlines into something that looked like a youth mental health “crisis.”

Could both of these stories be partially true? Of course: Emotional distress among teenagers may be genuinely growing while simultaneous bureaucratic and cultural changes — more focus on mental health, destigmatization, growing comfort with therapy and medication — exaggerate the underlying trends. (This is what Adriana Corredor-Waldron, a co-author of the New Jersey study, believes — that suicidal behavior is distressingly high among teenagers in the United States and that many of our conventional measures are not very reliable to assess changes in suicidal behavior over time.) But over the past several years, Americans worrying over the well-being of teenagers have heard much less about that second story, which emphasizes changes in the broader culture of mental illness, screening guidelines and treatment, than the first one, which suggests smartphones and social-media use explain a whole raft of concerns about the well-being of the country’s youth.

When the smartphone thesis first came to prominence more than six years ago, advanced by Haidt’s sometime collaborator Jean Twenge, there was a fair amount of skepticism from scientists and social scientists and other commentators: Were teenagers really suffering that much? they asked. How much in this messy world could you pin on one piece of technology anyway? But some things have changed since then, including the conventional liberal perspective on the virtues of Big Tech, and, in the past few years, as more data has rolled in and more red flags have been raised about American teenagers — about the culture of college campuses, about the political hopelessness or neuroticism or radicalism or fatalism of teenagers, about a growing political gender divide, about how often they socialize or drink or have sex — a two-part conventional wisdom has taken hold across the pundit class. First, that American teenagers are experiencing a mental health crisis; second, that it is the fault of phones.

“Smartphones and social media are destroying children’s mental health,” the Financial Times declared last spring. This spring, Haidt’s new book on the subject, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, debuted at the top of the New York Times best-seller list. In its review of the book, The Guardian described the smartphone as “a pocket full of poison,” and in an essay , The New Yorker accepted as a given that Gen Z was in the midst of a “mental health emergency” and that “social media is bad for young people.” “Parents could see their phone-obsessed children changing and succumbing to distress,” The Wall Street Journal reflected . “Now we know the true horror of what happened.”

But, well, do we? Over the past five years, “Is it the phones?” has become “It’s probably the phones,” particularly among an anxious older generation processing bleak-looking charts of teenage mental health on social media as they are scrolling on their own phones. But however much we may think we know about how corrosive screen time is to mental health, the data looks murkier and more ambiguous than the headlines suggest — or than our own private anxieties, as parents and smartphone addicts, seem to tell us.

What do we really know about the state of mental health among teenagers today? Suicide offers the most concrete measure of emotional distress, and rates among American teenagers ages 15 to 19 have indeed risen over the past decade or so, to about 11.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2021 from about 7.5 deaths per 100,000 in 2009. But the American suicide epidemic is not confined to teenagers. In 2022, the rate had increased roughly as much since 2000 for the country as a whole, suggesting a national story both broader and more complicated than one focused on the emotional vulnerabilities of teenagers to Instagram. And among the teenagers of other rich countries, there is essentially no sign of a similar pattern. As Max Roser of Our World in Data recently documented , suicide rates among older teenagers and young adults have held roughly steady or declined over the same time period in France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Germany, Greece, Poland, Norway and Belgium. In Sweden there were only very small increases.

Is there a stronger distress signal in the data for young women? Yes, somewhat. According to an international analysis by The Economist, suicide rates among young women in 17 wealthy countries have grown since 2003, by about 17 percent, to a 2020 rate of 3.5 suicides per 100,000 people. The rate among young women has always been low, compared with other groups, and among the countries in the Economist data set, the rate among male teenagers, which has hardly grown at all, remains almost twice as high. Among men in their 50s, the rate is more than seven times as high.

In some countries, we see concerning signs of convergence by gender and age, with suicide rates among young women growing closer to other demographic groups. But the pattern, across countries, is quite varied. In Denmark, where smartphone penetration was the highest in the world in 2017, rates of hospitalization for self-harm among 10- to 19-year-olds fell by more than 40 percent between 2008 and 2016. In Germany, there are today barely one-quarter as many suicides among women between 15 and 20 as there were in the early 1980s, and the number has been remarkably flat for more than two decades. In the United States, suicide rates for young men are still three and a half times as high as for young women, the recent increases have been larger in absolute terms among young men than among young women, and suicide rates for all teenagers have been gradually declining since 2018. In 2022, the latest year for which C.D.C. data is available, suicide declined by 18 percent for Americans ages 10 to 14 and 9 percent for those ages 15 to 24.

None of this is to say that everything is fine — that the kids are perfectly all right, that there is no sign at all of worsening mental health among teenagers, or that there isn’t something significant and even potentially damaging about smartphone use and social media. Phones have changed us, and are still changing us, as anyone using one or observing the world through them knows well. But are they generating an obvious mental health crisis?

The picture that emerges from the suicide data is mixed and complicated to parse. Suicide is the hardest-to-dispute measure of despair, but not the most capacious. But while rates of depression and anxiety have grown strikingly for teenagers in certain parts of the world, including the U.S., it’s tricky to disentangle those increases from growing mental-health awareness and destigmatization, and attempts to measure the phenomenon in different ways can yield very different results.

According to data Haidt uses, from the U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health, conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the percent of teenage girls reporting major depressive episodes in the last year grew by about 50 percent between 2005 and 2017, for instance, during which time the share of teenage boys reporting the same grew by roughly 75 percent from a lower level. But in a biannual C.D.C. survey of teenage mental health, the share of teenagers reporting that they had been persistently sad for a period of at least two weeks in the past year grew from only 28.5 percent in 2005 to 31.5 percent in 2017. Two different surveys tracked exactly the same period, and one showed an enormous increase in depression while the other showed almost no change at all.

And if the rise of mood disorders were a straightforward effect of the smartphone, you’d expect to see it everywhere smartphones were, and, as with suicide, you don’t. In Britain, the share of young people who reported “feeling down” or experiencing depression grew from 31 percent in 2012 to 38 percent on the eve of the pandemic and to 41 percent in 2021. That is significant, though by other measures British teenagers appear, if more depressed than they were in the 2000s, not much more depressed than they were in the 1990s.

Overall, when you dig into the country-by-country data, many places seem to be registering increases in depression among teenagers, particularly among the countries of Western Europe and North America. But the trends are hard to disentangle from changes in diagnostic patterns and the medicalization of sadness, as Lucy Foulkes has argued , and the picture varies considerably from country to country. In Canada , for instance, surveys of teenagers’ well-being show a significant decline between 2015 and 2021, particularly among young women; in South Korea rates of depressive episodes among teenagers fell by 35 percent between 2006 and 2018.

Because much of our sense of teenage well-being comes from self-reported surveys, when you ask questions in different ways, the answers vary enormously. Haidt likes to cite data collected as part of an international standardized test program called PISA, which adds a few questions about loneliness at school to its sections covering progress in math, science and reading, and has found a pattern of increasing loneliness over the past decade. But according to the World Happiness Report , life satisfaction among those ages 15 to 24 around the world has been improving pretty steadily since 2013, with more significant gains among women, as the smartphone completed its global takeover, with a slight dip during the first two years of the pandemic. An international review published in 2020, examining more than 900,000 adolescents in 36 countries, showed no change in life satisfaction between 2002 and 2018.

“It doesn’t look like there’s one big uniform thing happening to people’s mental health,” said Andrew Przybylski, a professor at Oxford. “In some particular places, there are some measures moving in the wrong direction. But if I had to describe the global trend over the last decade, I would say there is no uniform trend showing a global crisis, and, where things are getting worse for teenagers, no evidence that it is the result of the spread of technology.”

If Haidt is the public face of worry about teenagers and phones, Przybylski is probably the most prominent skeptic of the thesis. Others include Amy Orben, at the University of Cambridge, who in January told The Guardian, “I think the concern about phones as a singular entity are overblown”; Chris Ferguson, at Stetson University, who is about to publish a new meta-analysis showing no relationship between smartphone use and well-being; and Candice Odgers, of the University of California, Irvine, who published a much-debated review of Haidt in Nature, in which she declared “the book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science.”

Does that overstate the case? In a technical sense, I think, no: There may be some concerning changes in the underlying incidence of certain mood disorders among American teenagers over the past couple of decades, but they are hard to separate from changing methods of measuring and addressing mental health and mental illness. There isn’t great data on international trends in teenage suicide — but in those places with good reporting, the rates are generally not worsening — and the trends around anxiety, depression and well-being are ambiguous elsewhere in the world. And the association of those local increases with the rise of the smartphone, while now almost conventional wisdom among people like me, is, among specialists, very much a contested claim. Indeed, even Haidt, who has also emphasized broader changes to the culture of childhood , estimated that social media use is responsible for only about 10 percent to 15 percent of the variation in teenage well-being — which would be a significant correlation, given the complexities of adolescent life and of social science, but is also a much more measured estimate than you tend to see in headlines trumpeting the connection. And many others have arrived at much smaller estimates still.

But this all also raises the complicated question of what exactly we mean by “science,” in the context of social phenomena like these, and what standard of evidence we should be applying when asking whether something qualifies as a “crisis” or “emergency” and what we know about what may have caused it. There is a reason we rarely reduce broad social changes to monocausal explanations, whether we’re talking about the rapid decline of teenage pregnancy in the 2000s, or the spike in youth suicide in the late ’80s and early 1990s, or the rise in crime that began in the 1960s: Lives are far too complex to easily reduce to the influence of single factors, whether the factor is a recession or political conditions or, for that matter, climate breakdown.

To me, the number of places where rates of depression among teenagers are markedly on the rise is a legitimate cause for concern. But it is also worth remembering that, for instance, between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s, diagnoses of American youth for bipolar disorder grew about 40-fold , and it is hard to find anyone who believes that change was a true reflection of underlying incidence. And when we find ourselves panicking over charts showing rapid increases in, say, the number of British girls who say they’re often unhappy or feel they are a failure, it’s worth keeping in mind that the charts were probably zoomed in to emphasize the spike, and the increase is only from about 5 percent of teenagers to about 10 percent in the first case, or from about 15 percent to about 20 percent in the second. It may also be the case, as Orben has emphasized , that smartphones and social media may be problematic for some teenagers without doing emotional damage to a majority of them. That’s not to say that in taking in the full scope of the problem, there is nothing there. But overall it is probably less than meets the eye.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.