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A meta-analysis of studies on Internet Gaming Disorder found that this condition is, on average, present in 6.1% of young adults. The prevalence was higher in gamer-only samples (8.1%) compared to samples that included both gamers and non-gamers. The paper was published in Addictive Behaviors.
Internet Gaming Disorder is a pattern of excessive or poorly controlled video game playing that causes significant problems in a person’s life. It involves more than simply enjoying games or playing them often. A person with this disorder thinks about gaming constantly, feels restless or irritable when unable to play, and experiences a need to spend more and more time gaming to feel satisfied.
They may try to reduce gaming but repeatedly fail. As the disorder progresses, gaming slowly begins to replace school, work, sleep, exercise, hobbies, or relationships. Some people continue gaming even after it causes serious conflicts, poor performance, or emotional distress. Internet Gaming Disorder is especially concerning when gaming becomes a way to escape problems while simultaneously creating even bigger problems in daily life. The key issue in diagnosis is the loss of control and the harm that gaming leads to, rather than the raw number of hours a person spends gaming.
Study author Júlia Gisbert-Perez and her colleagues note that different studies tend to report varying prevalences of Internet Gaming Disorder among young adults, a demographic group highly vulnerable to this disorder due to the stress of transitioning to independence. With this in mind, they conducted a meta-analytic study aiming to integrate the findings of previous research to establish just how frequent this disorder is among individuals in this demographic.
The study authors searched the scientific research databases Web of Science (Core Collection), Scopus, and PsychInfo. They used search terms including “internet gaming disorder,” “online games addiction,” “problematic gaming behav*,” “pathologic video game use,” or “digital game addiction,” along with terms like “emerg* adult*,” “young adult*,” “university,” “college,” or “youth.” They looked for studies that reported a prevalence figure for Internet Gaming Disorder, comprised a sample of participants between 18 and 35 years of age, provided original empirical data, and were published in English or Spanish.
The search initially resulted in 1,411 publications. After screening and detailed inspection, they found 93 studies that met their criteria. Taken together, these studies included 149,601 participants. Their average age was 23-24 years old, and 51% of them were women.
The meta-analytic integration of the results from these studies showed that the pooled prevalence of Internet Gaming Disorder among young adults was 6.1%. Prevalence was higher in samples that consisted solely of gamers (8.1%), while it was 5.47% in mixed samples that included both gamers and non-gamers.
Further analyses revealed that the reported prevalence heavily depended on the specific diagnostic instrument used to assess the symptoms. Furthermore, prevalence rates tended to be artificially higher in studies with smaller sample sizes or those deemed to have a “high risk of bias.” Prevalence also might have been lower in samples containing more female participants, but the difference was not quite strong enough to pass the needed statistical thresholds.
Interestingly, when looking exclusively at the “gamer-only” samples, the researchers found that the prevalence of the disorder has been steadily increasing in recent years. The authors suggest this could be driven by the rise of competitive gaming platforms or the incorporation of predatory microtransactions and “loot boxes” in contemporary video games.
“These findings indicate that IGD [Internet Gaming Disorder] is more prevalent among young adults than in the general population, especially among gamers. The variability observed across studies highlights the need for methodological consistency and the use of validated diagnostic tools to improve comparability and inform prevention and intervention strategies,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to the scientific knowledge surrounding Internet Gaming Disorder. However, the study authors note that their search strategy might have missed some studies that reported age only in numerical terms, rather than using keywords like “young adults.”
Additionally, the authors report that their statistical analyses indicated a significant asymmetry in the published prevalences. Because scientific journals tend to favor publishing “significant” or shocking findings, it is highly likely that studies finding exceptionally high rates of gaming addiction were published, while studies finding low or unremarkable rates were never published (a phenomenon known as publication bias). This bias could have artificially distorted the overall 6.1% estimate, meaning the true prevalence might be slightly lower.
The paper, “Prevalence of Internet gaming disorder in young adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis,” was authored by Júlia Gisbert-Perez, Claudio Longobardi, Manuel Martí-Vilar, Sofia Mastrokoukou, and Laura Badenes-Ribera.