A meta-analysis of studies on internet gaming disorder found that the condition was present in an average of 6.1% of young adults. The prevalence was higher in the gamer-only sample (8.1%) compared to the sample that included both gamers and non-gamers. The paper was published in addictive behavior.
Internet gaming disorder is a pattern of excessive or inappropriately controlled video game playing that causes serious problems in one’s life. There’s more to this than just enjoying the game and playing it often. People with this disorder are constantly thinking about games, feel restless or irritated when they can’t play, and feel the need to spend more and more time playing games to feel satisfied.
They may try to play less games, but repeatedly fail. As the disorder progresses, gaming gradually begins to replace school, work, sleep, exercise, hobbies, and relationships. Some people continue to play the game even after it causes serious conflict, poor performance, and emotional distress. Internet gaming disorder is of particular concern when gaming becomes a means of escaping problems while at the same time causing more problems in daily life. The key issue in diagnosis is not the raw time a person spends gaming, but the loss of control and harm that gaming causes.
Study author Júlia Gisbert-Perez and colleagues note that different studies tend to report varying prevalence of Internet gaming disorder among young people. Young people are a highly vulnerable population to this disorder due to the stress of the transition to independence. With this in mind, they conducted a meta-analysis study aimed at integrating the results of previous studies to establish how frequently this disorder occurs among individuals in this demographic.
The study authors searched the scientific research databases Web of Science (Core Collection), Scopus, and PsychInfo. They used search terms such as “Internet gaming disorder,” “online gaming addiction,” “problematic gaming behavior*,” “pathological video game use,” and “digital gaming addiction,” as well as terms such as “emerging* adults*,” “youth*,” “university,” “university,” and “youth.” They looked for studies that reported the prevalence of Internet gaming disorder, consisted of a sample of participants between 18 and 35 years of age, provided original empirical data, and were published in English or Spanish.
The search initially yielded 1,411 publications. After screening and further inspection, we found 93 studies that met our criteria. In total, these studies included 149,601 participants. Their average age was 23 to 24 years, and 51% of them were women.
A meta-analytic synthesis of the results of these studies showed that the combined prevalence of Internet gaming disorder in young adults was 6.1%. The prevalence was high (8.1%) in a sample consisting only of gamers and 5.47% in a mixed sample including both gamers and non-gamers.
Further analysis revealed that the reported prevalence was highly dependent on the specific diagnostic instrument used to assess the symptoms. Additionally, studies with small sample sizes or those deemed to be at “high risk of bias” tended to have artificially high prevalence rates. It is also possible that prevalence was lower in samples with more female participants, but the difference was not strong enough to cross the required statistical threshold.
Interestingly, the researchers found that the prevalence of this disorder has steadily increased in recent years when looking only at the “gamer-only” sample. The authors suggest that this could be caused by the rise of competitive gaming platforms, or the incorporation of predatory microtransactions or “loot boxes” into modern video games.
“These findings indicate that IGD (Internet Gaming Disorder) is more prevalent among young adults, particularly gamers, than in the general population. The variation observed across studies highlights the need for methodological consistency and the use of validated diagnostic tools to increase comparability and inform prevention and intervention strategies,” the study authors concluded.
This study contributes to scientific knowledge about Internet gaming disorder. However, the study authors note that their search strategy may have missed some studies that did not use keywords such as “youth” and reported age only numerically.
Additionally, the authors report that statistical analysis showed significant asymmetries in published prevalence rates. Because scientific journals tend to prefer publishing “major” or shocking findings, studies that find very high rates of gaming addiction are likely to be published, while studies that find low or unremarkable rates are not likely to be published (a phenomenon known as publication bias). This bias may have artificially skewed the overall estimate of 6.1%, and the actual prevalence may be slightly lower.
The paper, “Prevalence of Internet Gaming Disorder in Young Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” was authored by Júlia Gisbert-Perez, Claudio Longobardi, Manuel Martí-Vilar, Sofia Mastrokoukou, and Laura Badenes-Ribera.
