Children with computer game addiction have a risk for development of deficit in mental functions. What kind of specific effect does this new “digital environment” have for children?

The goal of this research is to check the hypothesis that there is relationship between computer game addiction and low mood in 8-year-old children.

We used questionnaire for parents to reveal children with computer game addiction. Experimental group consisted of 24 8-year-old children with computer game addiction. Control group consisted of 24 children without computer game addiction. The children from experimental and control group were matched for gender. We used Revised Children’s Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS) for assessment of separation anxiety disorder, social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and low mood (major depressive disorder) in children (Child Self-Reported).

Spearman correlation analysis has revealed the significant (p<0.05) positive correlation between level of computer game addiction and low mood in children. However, we did not find the correlation between level of computer game addiction and other scales of RCADS.

It can be assumed that digital environment is a risk for increasing low mood in children. However, we need to do additional research using experimental design to approve the hypothesis that computer game addiction can cause the low mood in children.

There is demand for new, effective and scalable treatments for depression, and development of new forms of cognitive bias modification (CBM) of negative emotional processing biases has been suggested as possible interventions to meet this need.

We report two double blind RCTs, in which volunteers with high levels of depressive symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory ii (BDI-ii) > 14) completed a brief course of emotion recognition training (a novel form of CBM using faces) or sham training. In Study 1 (N = 36), participants completed a post-training emotion recognition task whilst undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate neural correlates of CBM. In Study 2 (N = 190), measures of mood were assessed post-training, and at 2-week and 6-week follow-up.

In both studies, CBM resulted in an initial change in emotion recognition bias, which (in Study 2) persisted for 6 weeks after the end of training. In Study 1, CBM resulted in increases neural activation to happy faces, with this effect driven by an increase in neural activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and bilateral amygdala. In Study 2, CBM did not lead to a reduction in depressive symptoms on the BDI-ii, or on related measures of mood, motivation and persistence, or depressive interpretation bias at either 2 or 6-week follow-ups.

CBM of emotion recognition has effects on neural activity that are similar in some respects to those induced by Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI) administration (Study 1), but we find no evidence that this had any later effect on self-reported mood in an analogue sample of non-clinical volunteers with low mood (Study 2).