Effects of Digital Game Play Among Young Singaporean Gamers: A Two-Wave Longitudinal Study

摘要

Using a large sample of Singaporean children and adolescents from primary and secondary schools, this study provides important results on changes in amount of time spent on gaming and violent content exposure, and the effects of such changes on academic performance, pathological gaming, aggressive cognitions and empathic attitudes. This study provided support for the hypothesis that excessive gaming was related to poorer academic performance and more pathological symptoms. For example, Stable-Hardcore students reported the lowest academic performance in both waves with a decreasing trend, and Stable-Casual students reported the highest academic performance. There was also a link between high violent game content exposure and greater approval of aggression as well as lower empathic attitudes. Students with constantly low violence exposure reported higher empathic attitudes, and lower acceptability of aggression. Implications of the study were discussed in relation to the treatment of excessive gaming.