Dr. Wayne Warburton, psychologist associate professor at Macquarie University, recently performed a study examining screen addiction among adolescents, and the results may surprise you.
A new study from Australian Doctor Wayne Warburton, German psychiatrist Dr. Kerstin Paschke, and the German Centre for Addiction Research in Childhood and Adolescence examines the link between difficulties regulating emotional behaviors in teens suffering from “gaming disorders.”
According to the article published on ABC Australia, Dr. Warburton states:
“The research is pretty clear that with screen addiction it’s quite common for the kids to become quite aggressive and sometimes quite violent when the screens are taken away,”
The study included 20 teenagers with gaming issues. It examined the connections between excessive gaming and differences in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, or VLPFC, the region of the brain that regulates emotion. What it found, generally, was that the group with a gaming disorder had a greater difference in activation, or a harder time, regulating their emotions when compared to the control group.
According to Dr. Warburton’s research,
“As many as 10 percent of kids who game meet the criteria for “hazardous gaming” while 3 percent of that group could be diagnosed with a more serious “gaming disorder.”
In addition to these findings, the study examined the brain patterns of teens in a 12-week pilot program called RESAT@-A, a program meant to provide the tools to regulate emotions and better communicate with others. It found that this disparity can be remedied with the proper tools and therapies.
Study Requires Peer Review
It’s important to note that this study has not been peer-reviewed or officially published, though this study by Dr. Warburton that examined “Internet Gaming Disorder” was published in May of 2022.
This more recent study only examines the brain patterns of 20 teenagers, and a much larger sample size would be needed to be representative of the population.
Secondly, the research may have other hurdles, as stated by Dr. Warburton himself.
“A disproportionately high number of teens with autism spectrum disorder have a problem with gaming,” he said while stressing that excessive gaming also impacts widely on children who are not neurodivergent.
He goes on to say that some of the study participants are neurodivergent, an important factor when determining the causality of differences between the control, considering there has been extensive research on the differences in prefrontal cortex processing for people that are neurodivergent.
Indeed, not much is known about the actual controls of the study until it is officially published. Still, the study itself is interesting and perhaps one to consider when thinking about your daily screen time.
What do you think of the gaming study? Let us know in the comments section below.
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