Teen Brain Vulnerability to Gaming Addiction Revealed in Groundbreaking Neuroscience Study

Playing video games is a common pastime for many teenagers, but for some, it can escalate into a gaming addiction. This is according to new research from the University of Rochester Medical Center.

A study involving 6,143 young video game users aged 10-15 tracked their gaming habits and brain activity over four years. Initially, participants underwent fMRI scans while performing a task that involved pressing a button quickly to earn a $5 reward. Subsequently, they completed Video Game Addiction Questionnaires annually for the next three years.

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The study revealed that adolescents who exhibited more severe gaming addiction symptoms over time had lower brain activity in the regions responsible for decision-making and reward processing, as observed in their initial brain scans. This finding aligns with previous research on adults, which suggests that reduced sensitivity to rewards, particularly non-gaming rewards, may contribute to problematic gaming behavior.

“A number one concern for parents of children and teenagers is how much screen time and how much gaming is enough gaming and how to figure out where to draw the line,” said John Foxe, PhD, director of the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester and co-author of a study out today in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions that discovered a key marker in the brain of teens who develop gaming addiction symptoms. “These data begin to give us some answers.”

The data used in this research came from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. Launched in 2015, the ABCD Study follows a cohort of 11,878 children from pre-adolescence to adulthood to create baseline standards of brain development. The open-source data model has allowed researchers nationwide to shed light on various facets of social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development during adolescence. The University of Rochester joined the study in 2017 and is one of 21 sites collecting this data from nearly 340 participants. Ed Freedman, PhD, professor of Neuroscience at the University and co-principal investigator of the University study site, led this recent research on gaming.

“The large data set that contains this understudied developmental window is transforming recommendations for everything from sleep to screen time. And now we have specific brain regions that are associated with gaming addiction in teens,” Freedman said. “This allows us to ask other questions that may help us understand if there are ways to identify at-risk kids and if there are other behaviors or recommendations that could mitigate risk.”

“We’re very proud that this Rochester cohort is a part of this national and international dialogue around adolescent health,” said Foxe, who is also a co-PI on the ABCD Study in Rochester. “We have already seen how this data, including the data gathered here from our community, is having a major impact on policy across the world.”