Fractional-order modeling and optimal control of a new online game addiction model based on real data

Abstract

The spread of online games has become more and more serious in recent years, which not only endangers the healthy growth of young people, but also has a certain potential harm to society. Therefore, how to effectively control the spread of games has become an urgent problem to be solved. To solve this problem, a new fractional model of online game addiction is developed in this paper. In the aspect of qualitative analysis, the non-negativity and boundedness of the model solutions are demonstrated. All equilibria and basic reproduction number are solved. The global asymptotic stability of all equilibria are proved by constructing ingenious Lyapunov functions. In terms of quantitative analysis, different from previous fractional order literature, we use a new method to fit the real data of game users in China from 2010 to 2021, and obtain the optimal fractional order α=0.98942 and model parameters. The estimated results show that the value of the basic reproduction number during this period is R0=7.1045. By setting different values of the parameters, the effects of all parameters on the model are shown. With the Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) and partial rank correlation coefficients (PRCC) techniques, the influence of all parameters in the basic reproduction number R0 are quantified and the means to control the spread of the game were generalized: isolation and treatment. Finally, the Fractional Euler Method (FEM) and the fractional Forward Backward Sweep Method (FBSM) are used together to solve the fractional optimal control problem and the optimal control strategy is determined. The results of this paper provide a new research idea for parameter estimation of fractional equation, and a more reliable result for controlling the spread of online games.