Premium
Online communication and social well‐being: how playing World of Warcraft affects players' social competence and loneliness
Author(s) -
Visser Mandy,
Antheunis Marjolijn L.,
Schouten Alexander P.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/jasp.12144
Subject(s) - loneliness , psychology , competence (human resources) , social competence , social psychology , the internet , developmental psychology , social change , world wide web , computer science , economics , economic growth
This study was designed to examine the effects of playing the online game W orld of W arcraft ( WoW ) on adolescents' social competence and loneliness, and to investigate the underlying mechanisms of the Internet‐affected social compensation hypothesis. The hypothesis states that being online affects adolescents' social competence as a result of a variety of communication partners and identity experiments online. A survey was conducted among 790 high school students. There appeared to be no direct effect between playing WoW and adolescents' social competence and loneliness. We did find an indirect effect via variety of communication partners. Adolescents who play WoW vary more in their communication partners, leading to an increase of social competence and a decrease of loneliness.