Relationship between Emotional Regulation and Video Game Addiction among Adolescents: Role of Perceived Social Support

Abstract

The study investigated the Relationship between emotional regulation and video gaming addiction: Role of perceive social support among the adolescents. The sample of adolescents' age ranges from 10-19 years (N = 298) were taken included both male (n = 210) and female (n = 88) participants. The participants filled the Emotion Regulation Scale (Phillips & Power, 2007) for emotional regulation, Video Game Addiction Test (Lemmens et al., 2009) for video game addiction, and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (Mitchell & Zimet, 2000) to measure social support. The results of the study suggested that emotional regulation is negatively correlated with video game addiction. There is a significant negative impact of emotional regulation on video game addiction. Moreover, social support did not significantly moderate the relationship between emotional regulation and video game addiction. The Mann-Whitney U test revealed that male scored higher on video game addiction and female scored higher on emotional regulation, whereas on higher educational level students scored more on video game addiction than lower education level. The study findings highlight that the emotional regulation is important in overcoming the videogame addiction with findings having strong implications for parents, teachers and policy makers to work upon the guidance and skill building of the adolescents.