A Scientometric Analysis and Critical Review of Internet Gaming Disorder Behaviours

Abstract

There are increasing concerns about internet gaming disorder (IGD). No review of existing studies has systematically analyzed and visualized the trends of IGD and those early identification of symptoms related to IGD behaviors. This critical review focuses on the emerging trends for early identification of symptoms related to IGD behaviors in papers published in Web of Science Core Collection from 2009 to 2021 by scientometric analysis and critical review. Scientometric data analysis technique includes co-occurrence analysis, cluster analysis and burst analysis of authors, countries, keywords and co-citation to visualize those contributing and associated factors to develop IGD behaviors and their relationships to mental-emotional symptoms. About 81.8% of the papers were published in the following countries: United States, United Kingdom, Australia, China and South Korea. The top co-occurrence keywords were ‘children’, ‘depression’, ‘anxiety’ and ‘attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)’, ‘scale’, identifying the population, characteristics and commonly used assessment tools that are susceptible to certain symptoms relating to IGD of which influencing factors facilitate the understanding of the association of sociodemographic characteristics. The main emerging topics were identified in this critical review after conducted the scientometric analysis. The results identified five topics: game impulse, motivation, evaluation scale, mediating effects and diagnostic criteria. This study provides an overview of the research trends on the identity and development of the IGD field of study.