International Child and Information Safety Congress“Digital Games”, Ankara, Turkey, 11 - 13 April 2018, pp.17-18
The goal of the present research is to investigate the digital game addiction status of
the students in high school institutions. The research was conducted in a relational screening
model. The universe of the research is composed of high school students in nine, ten and
eleventh grades of public schools in Yeşilyurt and Battalgazi, Malatya districts in the
academic year of 2017-2018.
Layered sampling method was used in the selection of the sample. The sample of 342
students includes 152 students at general high school education institutions and 190 at
vocational and technical high school education institutions.
In order to determine the digital game addictions of the students; Lemmens and his/her
colleagues used the Game Addiction Scale translated into Turkish by Irmak and Erdoğan to
determine the problematic digital gaming behaviors of adolescents aged between 12 and 18
and by validity and reliability studies. The scale is a seven-item short form of the GAS (Game
Addiction Scale) -21, consisting of seven sub dimensions and a total of 21 items. To
determine whether a person is addicted to a game, two monothetical and polythetical
formats are used. According to the monothetical form, if the person gives 7 points to 3
(sometimes) and over, the risk is defined as high-risk game addict, if he/she gives a rating of
at least 4 to 3 (sometimes) and over according to the polythetical form.
The hypothesis of normality for difference analysis was examined in all subgroups;
the data were found to carry the normal distribution feature (skewness and kurtosis
coefficients ± 1). For this reason, parametric tests were used in the analyzes. Data obtained
in the study were analyzed using independent sample t-test, one-way analysis of variance
(ANOVA). Significance level was taken as 0.05.
According to the newly obtained results in the research; 19.6% of the students who
participated in the survey are digital game addicts.
There was no significant difference in the level of digital game addiction among the
students according to the sex, the school they attended, the class they were learning, the
games their families played and the time they controlled the playing time.
There was a significant difference in the level of digital game addiction among the
students in terms of the degree of dependence of digital game relative to having computer,
having fixed internet connection, having mobile phone, internet on mobile phone, mother
education, parent education, family income situation and digital game playing time.
According to the possession of a computer; the average score of the digital game
addiction of students who have a computer is higher than the average of students who do
not have a computer. According to the situation of having fixed internet connection; students with a fixed
internet connection at home had a higher average score of digital game addiction than
students who did not have a fixed internet connection.
According to the possession of mobile phone; students with mobile phones have
higher average scores of digital game addiction than students who do not have a mobile
phone.
According to the situation of internet in the mobile phone; the average scores of
digital game addiction scores of students with internet on mobile phone were higher than
those of non-internet students on mobile phone.
According to mother education status; the average score of the digital game
addiction scores of the students whose mothers having high education level was higher than
the students whose mothers having low education level.
According to father's educational status; the average scores of the digital game
addiction scores of the students whose father having high education level were higher than
those of the students whose father education level was low.
According to family income situation; the average scores of digital game addiction
scores of the students having high family income were higher than those of family having
low and middle students.
According to playing time; as the duration of playing increases, the average score of
the students' digital game addiction scores also increases.