Postgraduate research students

In the past ten years, with the rapid growth of Internet use, as a new diagnostic method in the field of addictive diseases, the concept of Internet addiction is still the subject of many debates.  So far, Internet addiction, similar to addiction and drug abuse, has been defined as an individual's inability to control their Internet use, which has caused obvious distress and dysfunction in 5 areas: academic, social, professional, developmental and behaviours.  In addition, major depression, anxiety, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and schizophrenia are also considered comorbid psychosis (Han et al., 2006).  After conducting experiments on the phenomenon of online game addiction, Han and other scholars emphasized that the activation of Internet game stimulation may be similar to the activation of pathologically ill people.  In other words, online game addiction is suggested to be treated as a severe long-term disease.

The existing problems in the development of the Internet have led to the perceived need for parents to effectively control children's mobile phone use and even the duration of online games.  However, the existing literature, such as Ghosh et al. (2018), believe that the current monitoring of parents is too strict, and they think such behaviour infringes on children’s privacy, so the relationship between parents and children suffers a negative impact from strict interventions from parents.

In PhD research, I will outline the attitude toward gaming from different age groups, both teenagers and parents, then discuss their opinions about the parental approach and how family and state interventions on potentially problematic gaming behaviours impact their family relationships and daily routine children.

List by: Type | Date

• Dr Mark Wong
• Dr Christopher Hand

External supervisors

GTA in Social and Public Policy 2A, 1B and 2B