Evaluating the Social Cost of Conflict between New Media and Society: The Case of Gaming Disorder in South Korea

Changsok Yoo,Jee Hoon Sohn,Yelim Kim

doi:10.3390/su13148106

Changsok Yoo, Jee Hoon Sohn + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13148106

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Abstract

Historically, the introduction of a new media in mass market caused a strong conflict starting from the nineteenth century popular literature, comics, rock music and film. Interestingly, these conflicts have shown similar and repeated patterns, which is now called media panic and moral regulation, and games are following this pattern. In 2019, Gaming disorder (GD) was decided to be included in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), and similar conflicts on games arenow expected. However, the social cost and damage have not been fully addressed until now. Thus, this study focuses on the estimation of the social cost induced by GD for policy design and decisions in the public healthcare of South Korea. Using the contingent valuation method, a popular valuation method in econometrics for non-market goods, this study has tried to estimate the social cost induced by the introduction of GD into the public healthcare practice. Focusing on a false positive problem in the diagnosis, this study estimates that the willingness to pay for GD diagnosis for children is about KRW 152 K (USD 135). Considering the difference between the prevalence of GD (1.9%) and GD suspicion rate of children in the respondents (12.54%), the excessive medical diagnosis cost due to the false positive problem is estimated to KRW 101 billion (USD 89.6 M), which is about four times more than the annual medical cost for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) treatment in South Korea. Thus, strong scientific proof and a cautious policy approach on GD are needed before the inclusion of GD in the public health practice.

Highlights

gaming disorder (GD) (1.9%) and GD suspicion rate of children in the respondents (12.54%), the excessive medical diagnosis cost due to the false positive problem is estimated to KRW 101 billion (USD 89.6 M), which is about four times more than the annual medical cost for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) treatment in South Korea
This study has tried to investigate the social effect of the media panic and moral regulation due to GD, which is controversial both in the media industry and in psychiatry
A contingent valuation method (CVM) using a hypothetical scenario has estimated that the excessive medical cost due to the false positive problem in GD will cost more than KRW 101 billion (USD 89.6 million) just for the diagnosis, and this is four times more than the annual medical cost for ADHD

Summary

Introduction

The lively delivery power of film has brought about serious concerns that children and adolescents could be exposed to the violence or sexual stimuli of the film, which can cause a destruction of ethics in society [2]. Following the fast growth of the game industry through new technologies, concerns about games have increased, especially among children and adolescents, and concerns about gaming are creating some level of conflict in society and academia [6,7]. One of the prominent cases in this conflict is the study on the relationship between games and aggression. Based on the general aggression model (GAM), lots of studies were conducted to prove the relationship between games and violence [13]. GAM was developed to analyze the relationship between aggressive attitude and video media such as TV and film [23]. The theory assumes that external stimuli such as violent video content can change the psychological state of a person, and this change can be expressed as a behavior [9]

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