Adolescents' Game User Type Based on Adaptive and Maladaptive Game Use

Objective: This study classified adolescents into specific game user types based on their adaptive and maladaptive game use and then examined the differences in mental health, academic achievement, and quality of life according to game user type. Materials and Methods: This study performed a secondary analysis of data from the ninth analysis of the "Game User Panel"data published by the Korean Creative Content Agency. In addition, an analysis of variance with a post hoc Tukey test was conducted to examine the differences in mental health, academic achievement, and quality of life according to game-use type. This was a retrospective study using secondary deidentified data. Results: Among the total respondents, 39.5% of adolescents were classified as general game users (GGUs), 11.3% as adaptive game users (AGUs), 11.2% as maladaptive game users (MGUs), and 38.0% as twofold game users (TGUs). GGUs had the lowest scores for depression and anxiety, followed by higher scores in AGUs, TGUs, and MGUs. In addition, GGUs scored higher on quality of life than the other groups while the AGUs had higher scores on academic achievement than other groups. Conclusion: Adolescents experience both adaptive and maladaptive use, and experiencing only adaptive use without maladaptive use has been shown to be relatively infrequent. Therefore, education about online game use for adolescents should not be uniformly provided given the psychological characteristics of each group; instead, it should be customized based on game user type.