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The model of problematic Internet use advanced and tested in the current study proposes that individuals' psychosocial well-being, along with their beliefs about interpersonal communication (both face-to-face and online) are important cognitive predictors of negative outcomes arising from Internet use. The study examined the extent to which social anxiety explains results previously attributed to loneliness as a predictor of preference for online social interaction and problematic Internet use. The results support the hypothesis that the relationship between loneliness and preference for online social interaction is spurious, and that social anxiety is the confounding variable.

Online games have exploded in popularity, but for many researchers access to players has been difficult. The study reported here is the first to collect a combination of survey and behavioral data with the cooperation of a major virtual world operator. In the current study, 7,000 players of the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) EverQuest 2 were surveyed about their offline characteristics, their motivations and their physical and mental health. These self-report data were then combined with data on participants' actual in-game play behaviors, as collected by the game operator. Most of the results defy common stereotypes in surprising and interesting ways and have implications for communication theory and for future investigations of games.doi:10.1111/j. 1083-6101.2008.00428.x Who plays, how much, and why? A player census of a virtual world Americans, both young and old, play video games at an ever-growing rate. Today's adults, unlike those who dropped game play in the 1980s due to public shame (Williams, 2006a), play more than previous generations. 40% of adults are now regular players, compared to 83% of teenagers. The average player age is now 33, propelling the industry to $7.4 billion in U. S. sales in 2006 (Entertainment Software Association, 2007. The result is a population engaging in this medium as an acceptable mainstream activity. And as the Internet has become a larger part of everyday life (Wellman & Haythornthwaite, 2002), so too have networked games. 67% of teens now regularly play some game online (Rideout, Roberts, & Foehr, 2005). Online games bring people together as they use their cell phones, their computers and their gaming consoles to access not only games, but other people. The most social and high-profile of these spaces are persistent virtual worlds-games that are always on, in which players maintain a regular character who grows and changes, and in which many players participate in long-term social groups (Griffiths, Davies, & Chappell, 2003;Yee, 2006). These worlds, called ''massively multiplayer online games,'' or MMOs, are vibrant sites of community (Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006). Yet even as participation in them rises to several million players in North America alone, research on their players and their impact has remained relatively scant. Ethnographic and experimental investigations of player ''guilds'' and communities have explored the social dynamics and relationships that exist (Taylor, 2003(Taylor, , 2006Williams, Caplan, & Xiong, 2007), but systematic and generalizable research has remained elusive, largely due to the difficulties of securing access to players within the walled gardens of for-profit companies. The current investigation represents the first case of access to proprietary in-game player data. With the active cooperation of a major game operator, the current study surveyed players and unobtrusively collected in-game data on their behaviors. This combination of demographic, attitudinal and behavioral data generated a true player census of a virtual worl...

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Several hypotheses regarding the importance of gender and relationships were tested by combining a large survey dataset with unobtrusive behavioral data from 1 year of play. Consistent with expectations, males played for achievement-oriented reasons and were more aggressive, especially within romantic relationships where both partners played. Female players in such relationships had higher general happiness than their male counterparts. Contrary to stereotypes and current hypotheses, it was the female players who played the most. Female players were also healthier than male players or females in the general population. The findings have implications for gender theory and communication-oriented methods in games and online research-most notably for the use of self-reported time spent, which was systematically incorrect and different by gender.Female video game players now comprise 40% of all players, and women over 18 make up more of the game-playing population than do males under 17 (Top 10 Industry Facts, 2008). Yet, studies of men and women report both genders believe that computer games are a ''particularly masculine pursuit'' (Selwyn, 2007, p. 533). Are more women ignoring social sanctions for engaging in a supposedly masculine activity? Are men avoiding feminine actions while playing? To determine the answers, we must investigate how video game players are positioning their activity in relation to their gender, and better understand their reasons for playing games at all. Past media research on gaming has found that men and women perform in, and perceive, games differently (Blumberg & Sokol, 2004), but this research has not been updated since the mass adoption of large-scale online games. Likewise, social scientific research in the area of gender roles has not examined online game play, and how it may be changing gendered definitions of game play. At the same time, research covering a wide variety of social Internet activities has found women's uses and considerations to be different

The model introduced and tested in the current study suggests that lonely and depressed individuals may develop a preference for online social interaction, which, in turn, leads to negative outcomes associated with their Internet use. Participants completed measures of preference for online social interaction, depression, loneliness, problematic Internet use, and negative outcomes resulting from their Internet use.Results indicated that psychosocial health predicted levels of preference for online social interaction, which, in turn, predicted negative outcomes associated with problematic Internet use. In addition, the results indicated that the influence of psychosocial distress on negative outcomes due to Internet use is mediated by preference for online socialization and other symptoms of problematic Internet use.T he results support the current hypothesis that that individuals’ preference for online, rather than face-to-face, social interaction plays an important role in the development of negative consequences associated with problematic Internet use.