The Effectiveness of Play Therapy on Improving Emotion Regulation and Social Adjustment of Students Addicted to Online Games

Using online games has many negative emotional and social consequences. Therefore, the present research was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of play therapy on improving emotion regulation and social adjustment of students addicted to online games.

This study in terms of purpose was applied and in terms of implementation method was quasi-experimental with a pre-test, post-test and follow-up design with a control group. The research population was the fifth grade students of district 2 of Sari city in the 2021-22 academic years. The sample size based on G Power software for each group was determined 15 people, who this number was selected by purposive sampling method and by random method replaced into two experimental and control groups. The experimental group 8 sessions of 90 minute underwent the play therapy, and during this time the control group did not receive any education. The data were collected with addiction to online games questionnaire (Wang & Chang, 2002), emotion regulation questionnaire for children and adolescents (Gullone and Taffe, 2012) and children's social adjustment scale (Dokhanchi, 1998) and were analyzed by methods of variance analysis by repeated measurement and Bonferroni post hoc test in SPSS-26 software.

The findings showed that the play therapy improved the emotion regulation (reappraisal and suppression) and social adjustment of students addicted to online games, and the results remained in the follow-up phase (P<0.001).

The results indicated the effectiveness of play therapy and its durability on improving emotion regulation and social adjustment of students addicted to online games. Therefore, specialists and therapists can use play therapy along with other treatment methods to improve psychological characteristics, especially to improve emotion regulation and social adjustment.