Game playing is very popular among Hong Kong teenagers. This study aimed to investigate adolescent gaming behavior and addiction at the Internet cafe, and to explore perceived benefits and harms associated with the activity.

Methods
A convenient sample of 13 male high school students aged 12–15 years (mean age = 13.6 years) were interviewed at two Internet cafes. Young’s (Caught in the net, Wiley, New York, 1998) criteria of Internet addiction were modified to assess gaming addiction.

Results
Internet cafes were described as a safe and ideal rendezvous for gamers. The benefits of gaming included fun and satisfaction, fostering social support and teamwork, meeting new friends and becoming sociable, boosting cognitive techniques and intellectual agility, improved responsiveness and quick thinking. Perceived harms of gaming addiction were reduced time and interest in other important activities, poor academic performance, physical harms and emotional distress, disrupted friendship with non-gaming peers, risked family relationship and financial problems. Five interviewees (38.5 %) could be categorized as pathological gamers and two were problem gamers (15.4 %). The psychological factors associated with gaming addiction include low self-esteem, a strong desire for aggressive and exciting experiences, reliance on gaming to kill time and to obtain satisfaction, coping with problems and negative emotions, and obsession with achieving higher rankings in games. The social and environmental risk factors are accessibility to the Internet cafés, aggressive promotional activities at the Internet cafes, peer pressure, family influence and early gaming experiences, perceived parental approval, lack of parental supervision, and poor family relationship.

There are growing concerns that seem to suggest that students no longer engage in school-related activities as they ought to. Recent observation has revealed that students now spend excessive time participating in Internet gambling with their smartphone during school period. This trend could have far-reaching consequences on their schoolwork engagement and by extension, academic performance. Drawing on the Dualistic Model of Passion, this study therefore, examined the mediatory role of smartphone addiction in the gambling passion—schoolwork engagement relation. A cross-sectional design was adopted. Male undergraduates (N = 278) of a large public university in Nigeria who engage in Internet gambling participated in the study. They completed self-report measures of gambling passion, smartphone addiction, and schoolwork engagement. Results showed that harmonious gambling passion was not related to smartphone addiction whereas it was positively related to schoolwork engagement. Obsessive gambling passion had positive and negative relations with smartphone addiction and schoolwork engagement, respectively. Smartphone addiction was negatively related to schoolwork engagement and mediated only the obsessive gambling passion—schoolwork engagement relation but not that between harmonious gambling passion and schoolwork engagement. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

The study examined Macau parents’ perceptions of underage children’s gambling involvement, and parents’ attitudes towards help seeking if their children had a gambling problem. The parents’ gambling behavior in the past year was also investigated.

Methods
This is a parent survey using a self-administered questionnaire. A convenience sample of 311 Macau parents (106 fathers and 205 mothers) with underage children aged 3–17 years was recruited. The response rate is 77.8%. The participants were asked if they had ever approved or taught their underage children to gamble, and how did they award their children when they won in gambling games. The parents were also asked if they had gambled in the previous 12 months, and their gambling behavior was assessed by the Chinese Problem Gambling Severity Index (CPGSI).

Results
Half of the parents surveyed (52%) did not approve underage gambling but 81% taught their underage children to play different gambling games. Children were awarded with money (55%), praises (17.5%), toys (15%) and food (12.5%) when they won in games. One-fifth (20.6%) were distressed with their children’s gambling problem. Many (68.8%) were willing to seek help to cope with children’s gambling problems. Only 21.2% (n = 66) of the parents reported gambling in the past year. Using the CPGSI, 4.5% of these gamblers could be identified as problem gamblers, and 16.7% were moderate-risk gamblers.