PHONE AND GAME ADDICTION: SCALE ANALYSIS, THE STARTING AGE AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH ACADEMIC SUCCESS

This study has three goals. Those are; to investigate i. the relationship between starting age of digital games and age of using (having) a phone, and phone and game addiction, ii. the impact of game and phone addiction on academic success and iii. the validity and reliability of the developed phone and game addiction scales. In order to achieve these goals, data is collected from 446 university students by utilizing a standard questionnaire. As a result of the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis carried out, it is seen that the scale of the game addiction has two dimensions (desire and ambition), the scale of phone addiction has four dimensions (internet, deprivation, communication and freedom), and both scales are valid and reliable. Results of the structural equation analysis reveal that there is a strong negative relationship between the age of starting to play games and using (having) a phone, and the game and phone addiction. It is also determined that as the starting age of playing digital game decreases, the level of addiction increases. Although the effect of phone addiction on academic success (duration of studying and overall academic average) is relatively low in comparison with the game addiction, both have statistically negative effects. It is also found in the study that the game addiction has a partial mediation effect between phone addiction and academic success