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Education campaign and family understanding affect stability and qualitative behavior of an online game addiction model for children and youth in Thailand
Author(s) -
Viriyapong Ratchada,
Sookpiam Monthicha
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
mathematical methods in the applied sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1099-1476
pISSN - 0170-4214
DOI - 10.1002/mma.5796
Subject(s) - addiction , affect (linguistics) , value (mathematics) , stability (learning theory) , point (geometry) , psychology , addiction treatment , social psychology , developmental psychology , mathematics , computer science , statistics , geometry , communication , neuroscience , machine learning
Online game addiction has become a large problem worldwide, and it could give negative impacts on children in many ways such as physical health, learning, emotion, and behavior. Online game addiction is mostly found in children and youth at the age of 15 to 24 years. Therefore, in this paper, we have developed a mathematical model of online game addiction to explore the effects of education campaign and family understanding on online game addiction in Thailand. Analysis of this model reveals two main equilibria, addiction‐free (AFE) and addiction‐present (APE) ones. Results show that the AFE is locally asymptotically stable when the value of basic reproduction number ( R 0 ) is less than the unity; otherwise, there is a unique endemic equilibrium point, and it is locally stable when satisfies the Routh‐Hurwitz criterion. Further, the conditions of AFE to be globally stable are demonstrated. Finally, the results of sensitivity analysis and numerical simulation show that the effectiveness of both education campaign and family understanding is an important factor in reducing the value of R 0 and holds great promise for lowering the number of children and youth who addict to online game in Thailand.