Internet gaming disorders are common in college

When young individuals become overly addicted to internet gaming, it can lead to sleep difficulties, depression, anxiety, and, in some cases, suicidal thoughts, according to new research.

Between 2007 and 2015, phone interviews with over 3,000 American college students found that one in every twenty had “internet gaming disorder,” a medical illness defined by excessive use of gadgets both online and offline.

“Internet gaming, like any addiction, must produce disruptions in everyday life to be labeled a problem,” said research author Dr. Maurice Ohayon, head of the Stanford Sleep Epidemiology Research Center at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

“Playing (online games) until late in the night, and then having difficulties to get up in the morning to go to class or to work, or simply skipping classes,” Ohayon said.

Ohayon also discovered that the habit was associated with a higher-than-normal chance of “feeling unrested when they wake up, being fatigued, feeling depressed, and having social anxiety.”

Does this conclusively imply that gaming illness is a direct cause of poor mental and physical health? No, according to Ohayon, who warns that not enough is known about the disorder and that “causality cannot be inferred.”

He and his colleagues also found that “many elements such as feeling depressed, social anxiety, having very few friends, being unhappy with social life, and suicidal thoughts pointed to social isolation or loneliness among students with internet gaming disorder.”

According to the study’s authors, 90 percent of American households are now connected to the internet, with teens and young adults being the most frequent users.

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