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Children and Video Games: Addiction, Engagement, and Scholastic Achievement

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CYBERPSYCHOLOGY & BEHAVIOR
Volume 12, Number 5, 2009 RAPID COMMUNICATION
ª Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
DOI: 10.1089=cpb.2009.0079

Children and Video Games: Addiction, Engagement,

and Scholastic Achievement

Marko M. Skoric, Ph.D.,1 Linda Lay Ching Teo, M.M.C.,2 and Rachel Lijie Neo, B.A.1

Abstract

The aim of this study is to assess the relationship between video gaming habits and elementary school students’
academic performance. More specifically, we seek to examine the usefulness of a distinction between addiction
and high engagement and assess the predictive validity of these concepts in the context of scholastic achievement.
Three hundred thirty-three children ages 8 to 12 years from two primary schools in Singapore were selected to
participate in this study. A survey utilizing Danforth’s Engagement-Addiction (II) scale and questions from DSM-
IV was used to collect information from the schoolchildren, while their grades were obtained directly from their
teachers. The findings indicate that addiction tendencies are consistently negatively related to scholastic perfor-
mance, while no such relationship is found for either time spent playing games or for video game engagement. The
implications of these findings are discussed.

Introduction performance and the severity of addictive tendencies among

video gamers.8–15

V ideo games are unarguably becoming one of the domi-

nant forms of electronic entertainment for both adults
and children around the world. In the United States, video
game sales witnessed a phenomenal 43% increase from
US$12.5 billion in 2006 to a $18.8 billion in 2007.1 People are
exposed to many different video gaming platforms ranging
from gaming consoles attached to television sets to portable
devices such as mobile phones and PalmPilots.2
Video games have certain distinct characteristics that set
them apart from other types of games. One such hallmark is
the interactive, mediated environment of the video gaming
world.3 The constant exchanges of messages between game
and gamer, the succession of the roles between observer and
participant, and the options of testing a variety of realities
highlight the nature of gaming as play.3 Gaming narratives
constantly incentivize children with gaming points, ‘‘lives,’’
new weapons, and so forth, for mastering new skills.4 Con-
sequently, children invest a lot of time and effort to acquire
such gaming knowledge and skills.5,6
Unsurprisingly, these developments have led to concerns
from many parents, educators, and policymakers that the
excessive amount of time spent by children on video games
may result in the development of addictive tendencies among
children video gamers.7 Numerous research studies have
shown a significant negative relationship between academic
However, people who devote a lot of time to video game
play may not necessarily suffer the negative ramifications of
gaming addiction.16 Instead, they might perceive video game
play to be a highly engaging activity. Such engagement ten-
dencies derived from video game play could potentially even
have ameliorative effects on schoolwork and academic per-
formance.16
While many previous studies have investigated the rela-
tionship between video gaming addiction=engagement and
scholastic achievement among university students and ado-
lescents, there has been a paucity of studies done specifically
on elementary school children. According to an Annenberg
Public Policy Survey of children’s media consumption habits,
the vast majority of elementary school children (74%) have
video gaming equipment at home and spend almost as much
time as teenagers playing video games daily. Parents of ele-
mentary school children have expressed significantly greater
consternation about the effects of video and computer games
than parents of preschoolers and teenagers.17
In Singapore, the high household broadband penetration
rate of 95%18 and the rising proportion of the populace that
owns computers and gaming devices have served as catalysts
for the rapid growth of the local electronic gaming market.19
A nationwide representative survey commissioned by Sin-
gapore’s Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) showed

1
Division of Communication Research, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication & Information, Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore.
2
Brand Manager, Shriro Singapore Pte Ltd, Singapore.

567
568
that elementary school–aged children were the most likely
to download or play video games.18 Furthermore, Singapore
is a meritocratic Asian society that places great emphasis on a
person’s academic credentials.20 Predictably, parents have
expressed a lot of concern about the effects of video game
play on their children’s scholastic achievement.7 Thus, this
study uses the Singapore context to examine the usefulness of
a distinction between addiction and high engagement and
assess the predictive validity of both of these concepts in the
context of scholastic achievement.
Literature Review
Time spent playing video games and scholastic
performance
Many Singaporean parents and educators have expressed
consternation that their children’s academic results will be
adversely affected by the amount of time spent playing video
games. One parent even told the local broadsheet The Straits
Times that controlling the amount of time spent playing video
games is more important than regulating the type of video
games children play.7
Previous research findings on the relationship between
the amount of time spent playing video games and aca-
demic performance have been mixed. Some video gaming
effect studies have shown that scholastic achievement is in-
versely related to the amount of time spent playing video
games 9–14,16 whereas other studies have found no significant
association between the amount of video game play and ac-
ademic performance.15,21–23
On the one hand, it has been argued that the more time a
child spends playing video games, the less time he or she can
afford to spend on scholastic activities such as reading or
doing homework, causing academic performance to suffer.9
On the other hand, other scholars have contended that the
proportion of time spent by a typical child on video game
play is not sufficiently large enough to have any deleterious
effect on scholastic performance.24 Hence, we pose the fol-
lowing research question:
RQ1: Will the amount of time spent playing video games be asso-
ciated with scholastic achievement?
Video game addiction, engagement,
and scholastic performance
Although numerous studies have been done on video game
addiction, there is still no standardized definition of the con-
cept. Nevertheless, scholars concur that addiction of any
kind is usually associated with an uncontrollable urge, often
accompanied by a loss of control, a preoccupation with use,
and a desire to continue with the activity even though it cre-
ates problems.25 One of the most popular tools for deter-
mining video gaming addiction was developed by Brown,26,27
who based his video gaming addiction criteria on the Diag-
nostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)’s
description of addictive tendencies.28 His criteria comprised
six measures: tolerance—occurs when people engaging in vi-
deo game play gradually spend increasing amounts of time to
achieve certain desired effects; mood modification—engaging in
video game play as a coping mechanism (e.g., to escape from
reality); salience—happens when video game play dominates
SKORIC ET AL.
a person’s thoughts and behavior such that he or she is unable
to stop playing; conflict—video game play that culminates in
either internal or external arguments; withdrawal symptoms—
moodiness, irritability, and so on, that take place when video
game play is suddenly stopped; and relapse and reinstatement—
the inability to completely stop video game play.26,27
To date, many video gaming scholars have utilized
Brown’s26,27 criteria to examine addictive tendencies among
video gamers.4,29 However, other scholars have challenged
the assumption that all of the six criteria form part of the video
gaming addiction construct.16 Drawing mainly on Brown’s
definitions of behavioral addiction,26,27 Charlton synthesized
a theoretical construct, the Engagement-Addiction scale, to
differentiate high engagement from video game addiction.16
A factor analysis of the questionnaire items revealed that
only part of Brown’s criteria for behavioral addiction (i.e., be-
havioral salience, conflict (both internal and external), relapse
and reinstatement, and withdrawal, fell under the dimension
of computer addiction. However, the rest of Brown’s26,27 criteria
(tolerance, euphoria, and cognitive salience) loaded under the
engagement dimension,16,30 implying that these ‘‘addiction’’
criteria were not indicative of dysfunctional video gaming
patterns but rather a form of ‘‘intense, but benign, engage-
ment.’’30(p9) Charlton’s findings were further validated by
Danforth’s30 subsequent study on online gaming addiction.
Both Charlton and Danforth argued that using such
peripheral criteria to identify video game addiction could
potentially result in a significant overestimation of the prev-
alence of video gaming addiction.16,30–32 Furthermore, they
suggested that those criteria relating to high levels of en-
gagement cannot be considered as properties that identify
addictive behavior patterns and are aspects of ‘‘normal’’ play.
Thus, it is important to distinguish between harmful addictive
behaviors and benign video gaming engagement.16,31
With specific regard to the relationship between addictive
tendencies and school performance, several researchers have
found that addicted adolescents had lower school grades
than their nonaddicted peers.4,8,10,33
However, the relationship between engagement tendencies
and academic performance remains relatively unexplored.
Some scholars have contended that high computer engage-
ment is an indicator of high computer usage that is non-
pathological and does not have negative consequences on
individuals.31,32 Reddy argues that video gaming engage-
ment tendencies, such as a desire to devote ever longer peri-
ods of time to an activity, euphoric feelings while gaming, or a
cognitive fixation with gaming, are all perfectly rational re-
sponses to an enjoyable hobby.35 Indeed, Shotton’s study of
individuals with ‘‘highly zealous computing’’ behavior re-
ported positive cognitive outcomes, such as improved ana-
lytical and reasoning skills, and higher personal development,
such as greater confidence and self-esteem.36,37 However, in
an interpretive qualitative analysis of responses from 12 video
gamers who played EverQuest, findings suggested that both
adult and adolescent players who were highly engaged by
video game play appear to experience negative life conse-
quences to a certain degree.38
To date, previous studies have mostly focused on estab-
lishing the factorial validity of the engagement-addiction
construct.32,39 However, it is also equally important to gauge
if the respective addiction and engagement constructs have
predictive validity with variables such as socio-academic
VIDEO GAMES, ADDICTION, ENGAGEMENT, AND SCHOLASTIC ACHIEVEMENT
functioning. Hence, the following hypothesis and research
question are proposed:
H1: Addictive tendencies will have a negative association
with scholastic achievement.
RQ2: What is the relationship between engagement and scholastic
achievement?
Methodology
Participants
The study was conducted on 333 elementary school video
gamers ages 8 to 12 (M ¼ 10.00, SD ¼ 1.08) from two public
schools that were reflective of Singapore’s diverse demo-
graphics. First and second graders were excluded because the
schools felt that these students may face difficulty compre-
hending the survey questions. The sample consisted of 54%
boys and 46% girls; 57.4% were Chinese, 33.5% were Malay,
7.6% were Indian, and the remaining 1.5% were from other
ethnic backgrounds.
Measures
Amount of time spent playing video games. Participants
were asked to indicate the amount of time spent playing vi-
deo games on a typical school day and typical weekend day
(in the morning, afternoon and evening). Their overall scores
were summed up and then recoded into a 4-point scale
ranging from A little time to A lot of time spent playing video
games for weekdays (M ¼ 2.53, SD ¼ 1.07) and weekends
(M ¼ 2.54, SD ¼ 0.99).
Assessment of addiction tendencies. Respondents were
asked to complete a series of 11 statements about computer=
video game play, which were measured on a 6-point Likert
scale (1, strongly disagree, to 6, strongly agree). These questions
were based on three of the six dimensions of Brown’s video
gaming addiction criteria,26,27 namely, behavioral salience (e.g.,
‘‘I find that I need to spend more and more money on com-
puter=video games in order to feel good’’), conflict (e.g., ‘‘Ar-
guments have arisen at home because of the time I spend on
computer=video games’’), and withdrawal symptoms (e.g.,
‘‘When I am not playing computer=video games, I feel restless
or irritable’’), which loaded under the addiction factor in
Danforth’s study.30 Three questions were added based on
DSM-IV,28 pretested and modified so that they were applicable
to the young participants. These 11 statements were simplified
and pretested on 8 to 12 year olds prior to conducting this
study. There was good internal reliability in the addictive
tendencies scale with an alpha of 0.75 (M ¼ 26.16, SD ¼ 10.03).
Assessment of engagement tendencies. Eight questions
were used to measure video gaming engagement among el-
ementary school students. These questions were adapted
from the three dimensions of Brown’s criteria for video
gaming addiction: tolerance (e.g., ‘‘I find that I need to spend
more and more time on computer=video games in order to
feel good’’), euphoria (e.g., ‘‘I feel happy when I think of
playing computer=video games’’), and cognitive salience
(e.g., ‘‘I find that I am thinking of computer=video games all
the time’’),26,27 which loaded under the engagement factor
in Danforth’s study.30 These eight items were summed up to
569
form an index with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.79 (M ¼ 26.89,
SD ¼ 9.59).
Assessment of school grades. The participants’ school
grades on their midyear (May) exams were obtained for three
subjects: English (M ¼ 64.87, SD ¼ 13.44), mathematics (M ¼
62.12, SD ¼ 23.37), and science (M ¼ 63.56, SD ¼ 14.74). Also,
their scores for English (M ¼ 64.87, SD ¼ 13.44), mathematics
(M ¼ 62.12, SD ¼ 23.37), and science (M ¼ 63.56, SD ¼ 14.74)
were obtained from their year-end (November) exams.
Preliminary independent sample t tests showed that the
raw exam scores differed significantly by grade level and
school type. These discrepancies occurred because students
who came from different grade levels and schools obviously
took dissimilar exams. Hence, we standardized the scores of
the students’ exam grades on each of these three subjects by
classifying the students according to their year of study and
the school they came from. These standardized scores for the
May and November exams were summed up, and the aver-
age z scores were obtained for English, mathematics, and
science grades respectively.
Demographic variables. Lastly, a series of standard de-
mographic variables pertaining to respondents’ age, gender,
level of study, and race were asked.
Results
In order to test RQ1, RQ2, and H1, three sets of hierarchical
regressions were run with the average standardized English,
mathematics, and science scores as the respective criterion
variables. For each of these hierarchical regressions, race and
gender were entered into the first block as demographic
control variables because they were significantly correlated
with the criterion variables. In the second block, the amount
of time spent playing video games on weekdays and week-
ends served as time usage predictor variables. Video game
addiction and engagement tendencies were added in the
third and final block.
With regard to RQ1, the amount of time spent playing video
games on weekdays showed a significant positive association
with English test scores (b ¼ 0.19, p < 0.05). The more time
spent playing video games on weekdays, the more likely an
elementary school child is to fare better for English. However,
the amount of time spent playing video games on weekdays
did not show a significant association with mathematics and
science test scores. Also, the amount of time spent playing
video games on weekends showed no significant association
with any of the three subject test scores (see Table 1).
However, children who exhibited greater levels of video
gaming addictive tendencies were significantly more likely
to have lower average standardized English test scores
(b ¼
0.33, p < 0.001), average standardized mathematics test
scores (b ¼
0 0.20, p < 0.01), and average standardized sci-
ence test scores (b ¼
0.23, p < 0.01) (see Table 1). H1 was
fully supported. As for RQ2, engagement tendencies showed
no significant association with any of the three subject scores
(refer to Table 1).
Discussion
In general, the amount of time spent playing video games
did not show any significant association with any of the three
570
Table 1. Standardized Regression Coefficients with Amount of Time, Addiction, and Engagement Tendencies
as Predictors of Average Standardized English, Mathematics, and Science Scores
Average standardized
english scores
(N ¼ 262)
Demographic control variables
Gender (0 ¼ male, 1 ¼ female) 0.14*
Race (0 ¼ Chinese, 1 ¼ non-Chinese)
0.01
Adjusted R2 0.02*
Time spent playing video games
On weekdays 0.19*
On weekends
0.08
Adjusted R2 0.02
Predictor variable
Addiction tendencies
0.33***
Engagement tendencies 0.14
Total adjusted R2 0.08***
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
subject test scores. These largely nonsignificant findings are
congruent with findings from previous studies.14,25 It is
possible that children who spend a lot of time playing video
games also devote a substantial proportion of time to doing
their homework, thus enabling them to maintain their
grades.
However, there was a significant positive association be-
tween the amount of time spent playing video games on
weekdays and English test scores, which runs counter to the
findings of previous studies.11 Because video games require
players to successfully understand the language used in the
gaming narrative to navigate the gaming environment
properly,14 it is possible that children who spend more time
playing video games on weekdays have a better command of
the English language. However, some video games require
significantly greater levels of linguistic competency to master
than others. Thus, future research might want to examine if
preferred video game type has any association with English
language test scores.
Conversely, video gaming addiction showed a consistent
negative association with academic performance. These sig-
nificant negative associations between gaming addiction and
scholastic achievement are consistent with findings from
previous gaming addiction studies done on adolescents40 and
college student samples,41 indicating that elementary school
children are likewise not exempt from the negative ramifi-
cations of video game addiction.
Unlike addictive tendencies, video gaming engagement
showed no significant association with academic perfor-
mance in elementary school children. These findings fill up a
very crucial gap in the video gaming literature by providing
empirical support for the distinction between high engage-
ment and pathological addiction in predicting negative life
outcomes, in this case, academic performance among ele-
mentary school children. While addiction can pose significant
problems to children’s lives by affecting their academic per-
formance, children who are simply highly engaged with vi-
deo games are unlikely to develop negative consequences.32
Future studies should focus on teenage and college student
populations to see if similar conclusions can be made about
these segments of the population.8,40 In addition to academic
SKORIC ET AL.
Average standardized Average standardized
mathematics scores science scores
(N ¼ 263) (N ¼ 262)

0.12*
0.14*

0.35***
0.21***
0.13*** 0.06***

0.11 0.05
0.07
0.05
0.14 0.06

0.20**
0.23**
0.13 0.10
0.16* 0.09**
performance, future research can investigate the relationship
that engagement and addiction have with other forms of
negative life outcomes, such as maladaptive psychosocial
functioning.
Nevertheless, clear classification procedures for the clean
delineation between engagement and addiction have yet to
be determined.16 It is imperative for future research to come
up with a clear set of criteria to demarcate the boundary
between nonpathological and pathological video gaming
engagement. Furthermore, researchers would benefit from
validating The Addiction-Engagement scales on younger
populations such as elementary school children.
There are several limitations to this study. Due to its cor-
relational nature, inferences about causal relationships should
be viewed with some caution. However, the school grades
used as a measure of scholastic achievement in this study
were obtained from two time periods: midyear exams and
end-of-year exams. Our survey was conducted in between
these periods, making our data not purely cross-sectional in
nature. Still, a longitudinal design would be preferred for
establishing causal relationships between the predictor and
criterion variables tested in this study.
Furthermore, in this study, we did not control for family
income because we believed that children would not be able
to accurately answer questions about their family finances.
Future studies examining the difference between gaming
addiction and engagement should try to find ways to assess
family income of young participants and use it as a control
variable.
Lastly, despite simplifying the questions, some children
still had difficulties comprehending the definitions of certain
words such as addiction. We are also unsure of whether some
of the youngest respondents were able to give accurate re-
sponses on the 6-point Likert scales used in this study. Their
difficulty in responding to survey questions was also evident
in the case when they estimated the amount of time spent
playing games; thus, instead of reporting raw number of
hours, we had to recode their responses into a 4-point scale.
Still, we argue that similar surveys could be used in future
studies involving children as young as 8 or 9 years if the
instrument has been simplified and extensively pretested.
VIDEO GAMES, ADDICTION, ENGAGEMENT, AND SCHOLASTIC ACHIEVEMENT
Acknowledgments
We thank The Singapore Children Society for funding this
project. Also, we are extremely grateful to Dr. Angeline Khoo
and her team from National Institute of Education (Singa-
pore) for allowing us to adapt some of their survey questions
for this study. Lastly, we thank Dr. Douglas Gentile for
helping us improve the addiction scale used in this study.
Disclosure Statement
No competing financial interests exist.
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Address correspondence to:
Dr. Marko M. Skoric
Division of Communication Research
Wee Kim Wee School of Communication & Information
Nanyang Technological University
31 Nanyang Link
Singapore, 637819
E-mail: marko@ntu.edu.sg
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