The relationship between anxiety and internet gaming disorder in children during COVID-19 lockdown: a network analysis

Frontiers in Psychiatry

Psychiatry

Lin Wu¹  Yang He¹  Zhaojun Pu¹  Tianqi Yang¹  Xufeng Liu¹  Shengjun Wu¹  Mengyuan Yang¹  Chunyan He²  Tao Xu³  Jing Li⁴  Ruina Dong⁵  Saiming Wang⁶  Bin Wei⁷  Yueqi Yang⁸ 

[1] Department of Military Medical Psychology, Air Force Medical University, Xi’an, China;Department of Nursing, Air Force Medical University, Xi’an, China;Psychology Section, Secondary Sanatorium of Air Force Healthcare Center for Special Services, Hangzhou, China;School of Public Health, Xi’an Medical University, Xi’an, China;Tangdu Hospital, Air Force Medical University, Xi’an, China;The First Primary School of Fuliang County, Jingdezhen, China;Xijing Hospital, Air Force Medical University, Xi’an, China;Xiong’an Rongxi Linquan Primary School, Xiong’an New Area, China;

关键词: anxiety;    internet gaming disorder;    children;    COVID-19;    network analysis;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1144413

 received in 2023-01-14, accepted in 2023-04-11,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundInternet gaming disorder (IGD) has become a social problem in children. Evidence from previous studies has proven that anxiety is associated with IGD. However, IGD was always assessed as a whole based on total scores, and the fine-grained relationship between anxiety and IGD was hidden.ObjectiveThe present study aims to investigate the fine-grained relationship between anxiety and IGD in elementary school students during the COVID-19 lockdown, and to identify potential targets for psychological interventions.MethodsDuring the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, 667 children from a primary school in China were investigated by the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale-Short Version and Internet Gaming Disorder Scale. R4.1.1 software was used to construct a network model, assess bridge centrality, and test the robustness of the network and conduct a network.ResultsThere were 23 cross-community edges (weight ranged from −0.03 to 0.12), and each node of anxiety was connected to different nodes of IGD. The nodes with the top 80th percentile bridge expected influence were A2 “social phobia” (0.20), A3 “panic disorder” (0.21) and IGD5 “escape” (0.22). The robustness of the network was acceptable.ConclusionFrom the perspective of network analysis, the present study explored the correlation pathways between anxiety and IGD in children and identified social phobia and panic disorder as the best targets for intervention to reduce IGD.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Yang, He, He, Yang, Wu, Wei, Dong, Yang, Pu, Wang, Li, Xu, Liu and Wu.