Online gaming addiction in youth: Some comments on Rosendo-Rios et al. (2022)

Abstract

A recent systematic review examining online gaming addiction among children and young adults was published in Addictive Behaviors (i.e., Rosendo-Rios, Trott & Shukla, 2022). However, dozens of papers were missing from the review. One of the reasons why so many studies were not in the review is likely to be because of the search terms used. None of the search terms included the words ‘adolescent’, ‘adolescence’, ‘emerging adults’, ‘excessive gaming’, ‘gaming disorder’, ‘video game addiction’ or ‘problematic gaming’. Moreover, studies were also included in the review if the mean age of the total sample was 25 years or below. This meant that some studies in the review included some participants who were not children, adolescents or emerging adults. It also meant that many studies were not included that had mean ages below the age of 26 years because they were not picked up by the search strategy. Given the high number of studies that were not included in the review, readers should view this systematic review as ‘suggestive’ of research in the area of problematic gaming in youth rather than ‘definitive’.