This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to investigate the interplay between problematic gaming behaviour and health-related outcomes at different developmental stages. A total of 50 empirical studies met the specified inclusion criteria, and a meta-analysis using correlation coefficients was used for the studies that reported adverse health implications regarding the impact of problematic gaming behaviour on depression, anxiety, obsessive–compulsive disorder and somatisation. Overall, the results suggested that problematic gaming behaviour is significantly associated with a wide range of detrimental health-related outcomes. Finally, the limitations of this review alongside its implications were discussed and considered for future research.

Background and Aims: The aim of this study was to identify problematic gaming behavior among Finnish adolescents and young adults, and evaluate its connection to a variety of psychological, social, and physical health symptoms. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted with a random sample of 293 respondents aged from 13 to 24 years. Participants completed an online survey. Problematic gaming behavior was measured with the Game Addiction Scale (GAS). Self-reports covered health measures such as psychological health (psychopathological symptoms, satisfaction with life), social health (preferences for social interaction), and physical health (general health, Body Mass Index [BMI], body discomfort, physical activity). Results: Problematic gaming behavior was found to relate to psychological and health problems, namely fatigue, sleep interference, depression and anxiety symptoms. Multiple linear regression indicated that the amount of weekly gaming, depression and a preference for online social interaction predicted increased problematic gaming symptoms. Conclusions: This research emphasized that problematic gaming behavior had a strong negative correlation to a variety of subjective health outcomes.

The socioeconomic status of parents is reportedly closely related to the digital screen usage and physical inactivity levels of children and adolescents. Internalizing and externalizing behavior characteristics may be linked to these associations and explain them. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of parents' socioeconomic status (SES) on youths' total screen time along with physical inactivity through internalizing and externalizing behavior characteristics. Thus, we examined associations between parents' socioeconomic status (using scores based on several indicators) and adolescents' total digital screen exposure and physical inactivity level, together with the potentially predicting role of the adolescents' internalizing and externalizing behavior. For this, we assessed the internalizing and externalizing problem characteristics, total screen time exposure, physical inactivity level and parental socioeconomic status of a large cohort sample of Finnish adolescents (the Northern Birth Cohort, 1986 comprised 2899 males and 3059 females). The present study includes data collected in two phases, in 1985-1986 and 2000-2001. Path modeling suggests that a low SES of parents was directly associated with adolescents' physical inactivity level, while externalizing characteristics were a significant and additional contributing factor in adolescents' level of screen exposure in both genders. Gender moderated the relationship between adolescents' internalizing and externalizing characteristics and physical inactivity levels. The results also suggest that parents' socioeconomic status constitutes a risk factor in relation to media screen exposure only in female adolescents. Implications of the findings are discussed.

The prevalence of mobile phone use across the world has increased greatly over the past two decades. Problematic Mobile Phone Use (PMPU) has been studied in relation to public health and comprises various behaviours, including dangerous, prohibited, and dependent use. These types of problematic mobile phone behaviours are typically assessed with the short version of the Problematic Mobile Phone Use Questionnaire (PMPUQ–SV). However, to date, no study has ever examined the degree to which the PMPU scale assesses the same construct across different languages. The aims of the present study were to (i) determine an optimal factor structure for the PMPUQ–SV among university populations using eight versions of the scale (i.e., French, German, Hungarian, English, Finnish, Italian, Polish, and Spanish); and (ii) simultaneously examine the measurement invariance (MI) of the PMPUQ–SV across all languages. The whole study sample comprised 3038 participants. Descriptive statistics, correlations, and Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were extracted from the demographic and PMPUQ-SV items. Individual and multigroup confirmatory factor analyses alongside MI analyses were conducted. Results showed a similar pattern of PMPU across the translated scales. A three-factor model of the PMPUQ-SV fitted the data well and presented with good psychometric properties. Six languages were validated independently, and five were compared via measurement invariance for future cross-cultural comparisons. The present paper contributes to the assessment of problematic mobile phone use because it is the first study to provide a cross-cultural psychometric analysis of the PMPUQ-SV.