• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.12 no.9
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• pp.445-454
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• 2014

It has been argued that internet game overflow (IGO) causes negative effects on mental health among adolescents. Especially, suicide has been known as one of the most serious mental health problems in Korea. This study is to examine the effect of IGO on suicidal ideation among adolescents, and to examine the relationship among IGO, depressive mood, and suicidal ideation by analyzing the mediating effect of depressive mood in the relationship between IGO and suicidal ideation. For this purpose, we analyzed the 2012 dataset from the Korea Children and Youth Mental Health Promotion Study (N=8,745) by the National Youth Policy Institute. The results showed that, first, about 5.6% of adolescents were included in the risky group depending on the criteria of the measurement. Second, IGO has a statistically significant effect on suicide ideation when considering the two variables only. Third, however, as depressive mood was found to have a complete mediating effect in the relationship between IGO and suicidal ideation, IGO increases suicidal ideation by increasing depressive mood. As policy and practice implications, the necessity of intervention to reduce IGO and mental health problems among adolescents was discussed.