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Introduction
The development of new technology, especially the high-speed internet, has brought effectiveness in all aspects of our lives. Moreover, people have obtained considerable benefits from technology. However, the development of technology has also created new types of problems that were previously non-existent. One of those problems is online game addiction. The literature in social psychology and internet research has reported the important issue concerning the problematic phenomenon of online game addiction (e.g. Kim et al., 2009; Lu and Wang, 2008). Recently, internet gaming disorder has been added with a “condition for further studies,” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ((DSM-5); APA, 2013). This statement means that internet gaming disorder remains an unofficial mental disorder in the DSM but now illustrates how internet game addiction has pronounced negative effects on mental health.
Online games can be played in the environment of computers or mobile devices, while online game addiction is defined as a maladaptive psychological dependency on online games “through the obsessive–compulsive pattern of seeking and using behaviors that take place at the expense of other tasks” (Xu et al., 2012, p. 322). Recent literature has focused on loneliness as the important cause of online game addiction (Caplan et al., 2009; Martončik and Lokša, 2016). Loneliness is understood as serving motivation to people’s behavior (Cacioppo et al., 2014), as much as modern society is referred as the age of loneliness (Nilsson et al., 2006; Strivers, 2004). Loneliness includes inter-personal isolation (loneliness resulting from the lack of social interactions), intrapersonal isolation (loneliness resulting from fragmenting of the self) and existential isolation (separation from the world; Yalom, 1980). Therefore, loneliness is not limited to the lack of social interactions but includes not being affiliated anywhere (Yalom, 1980). Given that a need to belong drives our thoughts, emotions and inter-personal behaviors (Baumeister and Leary, 1995), how loneliness influences online game addiction must be studied.
Existing studies regarding the predictors of online game addiction focus on external factors, such as socio-economic status (Hur, 2006), game design (Choi and Kim, 2004) and the collaborative and competitive nature of online games (Liu and Peng, 2009; Barnett and Coulson, 2010). However, to understand the online game addiction problem, we must pay attention to what...