Understanding Problematic Gaming During the Covid-19 Pandemic in Adolescents and Adults: A Systematic Review of the Literature.

Objective: A growing body of evidence suggests that online gaming increased during the COVID-19 outbreak. This systematic review aims to summarize extant literature that reported on problematic gaming among both adolescents and adults during the pandemic and to identify available research on the bidirectional association between problematic gaming and mental health outcomes.

Method: A systematic search was carried out through PubMed, Web of Knowledge and AGRIS, Embase, Medline, PsychINFO (from January 2020 to January 2023), using keywords related to problematic gaming and mental health outcomes. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal empirical studies which used validated measures of problematic gaming and mental health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic were included.

Results: Twenty-five empirical articles were eligible for the current review, comprising 28,978 participants. The majority of the selected studies had cross-sectional designs. Overall, most eligible studies showed significant association between problematic gaming and negative mental health outcomes during the pandemic. Correlations were mostly found between problematic gaming, depression and anxiety.

Conclusions: Future research focusing on the relationship between problematic gaming and mental health outcomes should go beyond the considerable weaknesses due to methodological limitations of cross-sectional design, sampling and measures.