As part of the Hamamatsu Mother and Child Birth Cohort Study, a research team from the National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, and Osaka University Graduate School discovered that the genetic risk of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) influences the pattern in which children's gaming time increases as they grow up.
In recent years, the impact of gaming time on children's development has been attracting attention, but there is a lack of understanding of what factors contribute to increased gaming time, and there are limited means of identifying which children are at risk early on, especially in early childhood.
In this study, the research group measured the amount of time spent playing games on a daily basis at multiple points in time between the ages of 636 and 308 in 328 children (3 boys and 9 girls) participating in the Hamamatsu Mother and Child Birth Cohort Study.
As a result, there were three patterns of changes in gaming time: the first group did not spend much time gaming throughout the observation period (3%), the second group tended to have a moderate and gradual increase in gaming time throughout the observation period (1%), and the third group saw a significant increase in gaming time throughout the observation period (77.6%).
Among these, the third group was found to have many genetic changes related to the onset of ADHD (high ADHD-PRS). Furthermore, when the psychological problems of the children in the third group were evaluated, it was confirmed that they had significantly higher internalizing problems (e.g., emotional problems and peer relationship problems) and externalizing problems (e.g., behavioral problems, hyperactivity/impulsivity). On the other hand, it was also suggested that having siblings and interacting through social play may alleviate these problems.
Paper information:[European Neuropsychopharmacology] Association Between Genetic Risk of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Trajectories of Daily Gaming Time in Children