Are Video Games and School Conflictual or Complementary Contexts for Affording Psychological Need Fulfillment? Implications for Adolescents’ Problematic Gaming and School Adjustment

According to the need density hypothesis, adolescents are at risk for problematic gaming when they only experience satisfaction of their basic psychological needs within, but not outside, the gaming context. This cross-sectional study among daily gamers (N = 309, M age = 15.63, 94.8% boys) is the first to examine this hypothesis in adolescence, thereby comparing adolescents’ need fulfillment between the contexts of video games and school and examining the role of need fulfilment in both contexts in relation to problematic gaming and school outcomes. Response surface analysis showed that adolescents’ overall need satisfaction (across the two contexts) was related to lower problematic gaming and less maladaptive school outcomes. Consistent with the need density hypothesis, adolescents reported more problematic gaming, school disengagement and school burnout when high need satisfaction in the gaming context co-occurred with either low need satisfaction or high need frustration at school. Directions for future research are discussed.