Designing and testing a causal model of video - computer games addiction based on perceived social support and metacognitive beliefs and emotional self - regulation as mediator factors

Many studies have focused on the direct relationship between emotional self-regulation, perceived social support, and metacognitive beliefs with addictive behaviors, but There is no research has been performed on the indirect relationship between perceived social support and metacognitive beliefs with video-computer games Addiction through emotional self-regulation. Therfore, the question of research is whether emotional self-regulation canmadiate this relationship? .

The present study was carried out aming to investigate the mediation role of  emotional self-regulation in the relationship between  perceived social support, and metacognitive  beliefs with  video-computer games Addiction in high school boy students.  

The present research was a descriptive-correlational study. The statistical population of the study was all boy students of the first grade of high school in Tehran in the academic year 2018-2019. The sample size consisted of 405 students who were selected through multistage cluster random sampling. The data were collected using video-computer games Addiction scale (Anuthawarn, 2008),  emotional self-regulation (Garnefski, Kraaj and Spinhoven, 2001), perceived social support (Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet, & Farley, 1988) and metacognitive beliefs (Wells and Cartwright-Hatton, 2004). Data were analyzed using Pearson correlation, regression and path analysis.

Finding have shown that perceived social support and positive beliefs about worry affect on emotional self-regulation and , on the other hand emotional self regulation affect on of computer-video games addiction (p˂0/01).

People who have higher levels of perceived social support and positive beliefs about worry, their level of emotional self-regulation has increased and as results, their level of computer-video games addiction has decreased.