Gaming Behavior of Bangkok Teens

Abstract

                This article derived from the research, “Parental Communication to Monitor Online Gaming Behavior in Teenaged Children’s View and Their Online Gaming Behavior in Bangkok”, but focusing only on gaming behavior of Bangkok’s teens: gaming time, game effects, game types, players’ motivations and their game addiction level. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods with focus group discussion and questionnaire distribution for data collection, the study found that Bangkok teens spend, on average, 2 hours 18 minutes per day on weekdays and 4 hours 49 minutes per day on weekends playing online games, especially during 19.01-22.00 hours. Most of them play online games 7 days per week and the average gaming time per week is 21 hours 8 minutes. Bangkok teen gamers self-reportedly indicate that online gaming mostly has physical effect on them but in a moderate level, followed by emotional effect which is in low level. The most preferable games are Multiplayer online battle arena game (MOBA) and Battle Royale (BR), where players fight to remain the last one alive: “ROV” and “PUBG” are the two most popular ones. The motivations in online gaming are having fun, coping with loneliness and playing with friends, respectively, and all of them are of highest scores. For game addiction level, 71.25% of Bangkok teen gamers are considered normal,while 22% show high level for game craving and 6.75% are somewhat inclined to online game addiction. Female teen gamers, however, tend to be more addicted than male counterparts.