With the rapid growth of smartphone use, playing video games via a smartphone device is becoming one of the most popular leisure activities among Chinese people. However, the popularity and prevalence of mobile gaming triggered many problems, especially among school-aged children. Compared with adults, adolescents are more likely to indulge to video games, as they are more vulnerable to external novel stimuli and have lower self-control (Cha & Seo, 2018; Spada, 2014; Guo, 2017). Several news reports and anecdotes show that excessive mobile game playing have negative affected adolescents’ health and behavior, leading to poor academic performance, cognitive distortion, and low quality of interpersonal relationships (Chen & Leung, 2015). Therefore, it is worthwhile to empirically investigate the reason why Chinese adolescents play mobile games and how to prevent them from excessive mobile game playing.
The central purpose of this study is to examine how gratifications (i.e., social, achievement, and relaxation) and prevention factors (i.e., cost and parental control) relates to Chinese adolescents’ mobile game playing. A self-administrated paper-and-pencil survey was conducted among school-aged adolescents in Kunming, China at the first week of September 2019. A total of 818 Chinese adolescents aged from 9 to 16 years old responded to the survey. The average age was 11.86 years old (M = 11.86, SD = 1.51) and 51.10% of them were male (N=418). Items in the questionnaire were adapted from past studies and were translated from English to Mandarin. Data were analyzed using Pearson correlation and hierarchical regression analysis in IBM SPSS Statistics 21. Results suggest that age (β=.06, p<.01) was positively associated with mobile game playing, while gender (β=-.07, p<.01) was negatively associated with it. This suggests that older and male adolescents play mobile games more frequently. Regarding gratifications, only achievement (β=.20, p<.001) and relaxation (β=.30, p<.001) was positively associated with Chinese adolescents’ mobile game playing. This suggests that adolescents who spend much time in playing mobile games had more intention to obtain achievement and relax. However, no statistical association was found between social and mobile game playing. With regard to prevention factors, cost (β=.24, p<.001) was positively associated with dependent variable, whereas parental control (β=-.08, p<.01) was negatively associated with it. This suggests that reducing the cost and implementing parental control can help adolescents’ avoid spending too much time playing mobile games. The total variance explained for Chinese adolescents’ mobile game playing was 35.90%. Theoretical, practical, and policy implications will be discussed.