Associations of emotional experience with gaming duration and risk of gaming disorder among adolescent gamers: An ecological momentary assessment study

Background and aims: Affect has been shown to be associated with gaming disorder (GD), but little is known about how its temporal tendency may predict excessive gaming. We aimed to evaluate how affect intensity and fluctuations may predict gaming duration and risk of GD among adolescent gamers. Design: A longitudinal study with ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to collect participants' data at four time points throughout the day during a 14-day observation period. Setting: July and August 2023 in Hong Kong SAR, China. Participants: A total of 317 adolescents (37.2% female; M_age = 15.5) who self-identified as regular gamers. Measurements: The major measures were daily game time, GD (Internet Gaming Disorder Scale; IGDS9-SF) and affect intensity (the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule; PANAS), while affect fluctuations were captured by obtaining the root mean squared of successive differences of the PANAS scores. Findings: Both overall negative affect intensity [β = 0.3816, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.0941–0.6691, P = 0.0095] and fluctuations (β = 0.5123, 95% CI = 0.0567–0.9679, P = 0.0277) were statistically significantly associated with the follow-up IGDS9-SF score. In terms of positive affect, only affect fluctuations were statistically significantly associated with IGDS9-SF score (β = 0.4457, 95% CI = 0.0279–0.8636, P = 0.0367). At within-person level, both daily negative affect intensity (exponentiated β = 1.0159, 95% CI = 1.0018–1.0302, P = 0.0265) and fluctuations (exponentiated β = 1.0144, 95% CI = 1.0030–1.0258, P = 0.0130) were statistically significantly associated with daily game time. Daily positive affect intensity (exponentiated β = 1.0136, 95% CI = 1.0025–1.0248, P = 0.0166) was statistically significantly associated with increased daily game time at within-person level. The association between daily positive affect fluctuations and game time was statistically non-significant. Conclusions: Both intensity and fluctuations of negative affect may predict gaming duration and risk of gaming disorder among Hong Kong adolescents. For positive affect, emotion intensity may be more related to gaming duration, and emotion fluctuations may be more related to adolescents' risk of gaming disorder.