| Abstract [eng] |
The growing popularity of online gaming creates potential problems in addition to its benefits. The aim of this work is to assess whether and how social anxiety, dysfunctional thinking, student’s self-efficacy and self-control predict problematic internet gaming. Therefore, survey was conducted in which 153 respondents participated aged between 18 and 30 years old (M = 23,18, SD = 2,98), 55 men (35,9%) and 98 women (64,1%). Convenience non – probabilistic sampling was used to find respondents, namely via Facebook groups for students and gamers. The study uses the Internet Gaming Disorder Scale – Short – Form (Pontes & Griffiths, 2015), the Student Self – Efficacy Scale (Rowbotham & Schmitz, 2013), Brief self – control scale (Tangney, Baumeister, & Boone, 2004), Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (Liebowitz, 1987) and Cognitive distortions questionnaire (Reis de Oliveira, 2015). It was found that men’s problematic online gaming is statistically significantly higher than that of women. Moreover, dysfunctional thinking was the most important risk factor and self-control was the most important protective factor in predicting problematic online gaming. The prediction of these two variables was the same for both genders. Study results highlight key areas for prevention and future research. |
