Addictive behaviors
September 25, 2026 · via Europe PMC
Perceived social norms and video gaming in emerging adults: A cross-sectional investigation.
Bernusky HCR, Sharma D, Coelho SG, David J, Hodgins DC, Shead NW, Kim HS, Keough MT
AI summary — for doctors, generated from the abstract only
Young adults who thought their peers gamed more tended to game more and report more gaming problems, especially when thinking of close friends.
What was studied
Cross-sectional survey of 1,295 Canadian undergraduates who gamed in the past year, testing perceived descriptive and injunctive norms against gaming frequency, duration and problem severity using path models.
Key findings
- Participants overestimated peers' gaming, most for distant groups
- Descriptive norms were linked to more gaming and more problem gaming across reference groups
- Injunctive norms mattered only for close friends, where effects were strongest
Clinical relevance
Perceived peer norms may be a target for brief interventions in young adults with problem gaming.
Who should care
Limitations
Cross-sectional design in a university sample cannot establish that norms cause gaming problems.
Normative feedback is worth studying further, but this study alone does not show it works.
This is an AI-generated summary of the published abstract, not a clinical recommendation. It may not reflect the full text or subsequent updates — verify against the original source before acting on it.
Abstract
BACKGROUND
Problematic video gaming is a growing concern among emerging adults. While perceived social norms are well-established predictors of substance use, their role in problematic gaming remains understudied. This study examined whether descriptive norms (estimates of others' gaming frequency) and injunctive norms (estimates of others' approval of gaming) were associated with gaming frequency, duration, and problem gaming severity across three reference groups: typical students, same-gendered students, and close friends.
METHOD
Participants were 1,295 Canadian undergraduates recruited from five universities who reported past-12-month video gaming. Participants completed self-report surveys of normative gaming perceptions, personal gaming behaviours, and gaming-related problems. Path models tested whether perceived norms were associated with problem gaming severity via personal past-30-day gaming frequency and average daily duration.
RESULTS
As hypothesized, participants estimated that peers gamed more often than themselves, with the largest estimations for more distal groups. Descriptive norms were positively associated with personal gaming frequency across all three groups, and with duration for the same-gender and close-friend groups; both were associated with greater problem gaming severity. Injunctive norms were associated with personal gaming frequency, duration, and problem gaming severity only for the close-friend group. Effect sizes were strongest for close friends, then same-gendered peers, then typical students.
CONCLUSIONS
Findings extend the social norms literature to problematic gaming and identify perceived norms as a correlate of problem gaming in emerging adults. Longitudinal/intervention research is needed to clarify the direction of these associations and evaluate whether personalized normative feedback may help reduce problem gaming.
DOI
10.1016/j.addbeh.2026.108871
PMID
42800374
Research metadata (titles, abstracts, authors, publication dates) is sourced from Europe PMC, which aggregates content from PubMed/MEDLINE, PubMed Central, and other providers under the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM/NCBI). NLM does not claim copyright on abstracts; the original journal publishers or authors may hold rights to the full articles. AI-generated summaries are derived only from the abstract, never the full text, and are always labeled as AI-generated.
Want more like this?
Browse more from the feed. A free account unlocks the full feed, saving and communities.
Back to the research feed