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Sun, A-P, Ho, C-H, Kuss, DJ 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8917-782X and Cross, CL,
2025.
The temporal stability of problematic gaming and gaming disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Addictive Behaviors Reports, 21: 100592.
ISSN 2352-8532
Abstract
Classifying problematic gaming/gaming disorder as a formal psychiatric diagnosis requires data on its level of temporal stability: are the dysfunctional symptoms transient or can they persist in the absence of treatment? To evaluate this question, we conducted a literature review and meta-analysis to investigate temporal stability in problematic gaming/gaming disorder. We identified 50 relevant longitudinal studies on PubMed, PsycINFO, and SCOPUS. Our review and meta-analysis engaged on two types of temporal stability: categorical stability and dimensional stability. We used MetaXL to run the meta-analysis for categorical stability. Our meta-analysis revealed that overall, the categorical stability rate was approximately 34–38% for the 2-year follow-up studies and approximately 43–45% for the 1-year follow-up studies. This indicates that between 1/3 and 1/2 of the gamers who initially met the threshold for problematic gaming/gaming disorder continued to meet such a threshold at follow-ups. Our meta-analysis included predominantly adolescent groups, which should be noted when generalizing the obtained categorical stability rates. Our review results also showed that overall, the dimensional stability was positive and statistically significant, indicating moderate or high correlations between symptom severity at baseline and at follow-ups. Temporal stability can be a complex concept. Our results suggest that although the categorical stability of problematic gaming/gaming disorder is not as strong as some major psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, it is similar to personality disorder and gambling disorder. Many complex factors may affect the temporal stability of problematic gaming/gaming disorder, possibly including severity of the disorder, whether the data is from clinical or nonclinical populations, and an individual’s age group or developmental stage. More methodologically rigorous longitudinal studies that address these issues are needed.
| Item Type: | Journal article |
|---|---|
| Publication Title: | Addictive Behaviors Reports |
| Creators: | Sun, A.-P., Ho, C.-H., Kuss, D.J. and Cross, C.L. |
| Publisher: | Elsevier |
| Date: | June 2025 |
| Volume: | 21 |
| ISSN: | 2352-8532 |
| Identifiers: | Number Type 10.1016/j.abrep.2025.100592 DOI S2352853225000100 Publisher Item Identifier 2393344 Other |
| Rights: | This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/4.0/). |
| Divisions: | Schools > School of Social Sciences |
| Record created by: | Jonathan Gallacher |
| Date Added: | 10 Mar 2025 13:11 |
| Last Modified: | 10 Mar 2025 13:20 |
| URI: | https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/53222 |
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