Reinforcing Relationships Between Gaming Disorder and Aggression and Intrusive Parenting Across 4 Years

Abstract

Adolescent gaming disorder is associated with aggressive tendencies and parenting styles; however, few studies have examined the reinforcing spiral patterns between aggression or intrusive parenting and long-term gaming disorder across several years. Thus, we investigated the reciprocal relationships between aggression and gaming disorder and between intrusive parenting and gaming disorder among Korean adolescents (n = 801, mean age at T1 = 13.39 years old) using an annual five-wave longitudinal study design. The results of the autoregressive cross-lagged analyses showed that gaming disorder and aggression were reinforced across 4 years (five waves) among male adolescents. However, these reinforcing spiral effects were not found in female adolescents. More intrusive parenting showed reinforcing patterns with more gaming disorder in both male and female adolescents in early-to-middle adolescence. These findings suggest that interventions for gaming disorder need to involve monitoring the ways in which gaming disorder and adolescents' aggression affect each other in addition to regulating parents' degree of control.