The pathological need to play excessive video games may not just be a symptom of underlying problems, but may actually cause certain mental illnesses in children, according to a new study published in the journal Pediatrics.
Researchers studied 3,043 children over a two-year span and found that symptoms such as impulsivity could serve as a warning sign for pathological gaming. Other conditions, such as depression, social problems and poor school performance, only developed or grew worse after the children began playing excessively.
Even where the underlying problem had existed prior to the excessive gaming, researchers found that it worsened when the children began to spend more time playing video games.
As part of the study, researchers conducted age-appropriate surveys on school children in Singapore. A child was considered a "pathological" gamer if he checked off at least five of the ten possible indications.
The prevalence of pathological video game playing in Singapore is similar to that in Western countries – about 9 percent – and researchers said that they had "no specific reason to assume the relationships between variables would be different in other countries."
They did admit, however, that relying on feedback from the children themselves may have been a limitation, and that the study could have "been improved by gathering information from additional sources, such as teachers and parents."