Factors contributing to online gaming addiction: A cross-sectional survey among university students

Abstract

In the new era of technology, an increasing number of people are starting to use the internet and at the same time, online gaming or online video games have become extremely popular among the young generation of youths, especially students. Online gaming will give the youths or students an escape from reality and most of them will get an addictive, adrenaline rush when they are facing a new challenge in a game. Online gaming addiction is still a mysterious problem in social life and people find it hard to regulate their time spent online and this situation even develops symptoms of compulsive online gaming players. The researcher referred to two theories, which are Uses and Gratification Theory (UGT) and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to conduct the three main factors (independent variables), which are social factors, psychological factors, and media factors. Therefore, this research study is to investigate the factors students addicted to online gaming or online video games among university students. This qualitative research has involved 100 respondents and the questionnaire was distributed by using a Google Form to the targeted respondents. The respondents were among Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) specifically the College of Business Faculty-student who were randomly selected. The results show that social factors, psychological factors, and media factors have been contributed to online gaming addiction among university students. The online gaming addiction among College of Business Faculty-student was moderate and not too addictive. Hopefully, this research also can suit as a reference to be used for various people such as parents, educators, school administers, researchers and the society to provide strategic and initiative guidance in playing online gaming.