Level up or break down – when gaming gets out of hand

In the Forte-funded project, a longitudinal study is being conducted in which upper secondary school Year 2 students are followed for a year. Every four months they complete questionnaires not only about gaming habits and well-being, but also about their personality, friendships, school satisfaction, and whether they drink alcohol or smoke. An important aspect is the role of parents.

“Parental attitudes have been largely absent in previous research, so we’re asking about that as well. Are they interested in the games, how permissive are they, do they set rules about how much gaming is allowed, and what does their own mobile phone use look like?”

Parents play a key role in screen time

The importance of parental involvement is echoed in the Public Health Agency of Sweden’s new guidelines on children’s and young people’s screen use. These recommend that parents take an active role in what their children do on digital media and keep in mind that their own screen habits influence both their interaction with the child and the child’s habits. But staying informed seems easier said than done for many parents, Sevtap notes.

“What we’re seeing is that adults have very little insight into what children and teenagers are doing, especially when it comes to gaming. Parents often think their children are just in their own world, shooting at each other.”

But this perspective misses much of the social interaction, sense of community, and meaning that gaming can bring.

“At least for my generation, we don’t have much to relate to, because we didn’t grow up gaming ourselves. And since it can be difficult to learn, many people simply give up. Both parents and professionals working with young people need to become more informed about what gaming actually means to them.”

In another ongoing Forte-funded project at Lund University, researchers are developing AI tools to assess mental ill-health. At the centre of this research is a so-called large language model (LLM), a machine learning model specialised in understanding and generating natural language. It functions much like ChatGPT but is adapted for clinical use, such as assessing patients' anxiety or depression.

Oscar Kjell, researcher at the Department of Psychology and project leader, emphasises the importance of incorporating a person’s own language in mental health assessments.

“Instead of just using rating scales to assess mental health from 1 to 7, you get much more information when respondents are allowed to freely describe how they’re feeling.”

With the help of AI, these descriptions can then be quantified to generate scores—just like rating scales—but with the added value of capturing the individual’s unique circumstances and nuances. This helps avoid the limitations of standardised instruments, which can reflect the questioner’s assumptions, contain narrow concepts, or confuse respondents, forcing them to fit their experiences into predefined boxes.

Capturing a broader picture of the individual

This ability to capture more nuance may be especially important for children and adolescents. According to Oscar, their method could be very useful in helping gamers.

“In the gaming sphere, there’s an enormous amount of data to collect from players—how often they play, for how long, when, where, and how. But also their own interactions with each other via voice and text messages. These models that we’re developing could be applied to this, for instance to issue warnings or assist with preventive measures if someone appears to be heading towards depression.”

Regardless of what adults think of it, gaming is here to stay. That’s why it’s all the more important to conduct research on its effects and for adults to become more informed and engaged—including in collaboration with gaming companies, Sevtap Gurdal argues.

“Games are expanding, becoming more and more advanced, and the graphics are starting to look almost like a film. At the same time, these young people are a very vulnerable group. A lot is happening developmentally and in terms of identity at that age.”