Research Article Online Gaming Addiction and Quality of Life among Early Adolescents in Thailand: An Investigation from a SEM-Neural Network Approach Veera Bhatiasevi , 1 Pungpond Rukumnuaykit , 2 and Piriya Pholphirul 3 1 Mahidol University International College (MUIC), 999 Phutthamonthon Road, Salaya, Nakhon Pathom 73170, Thailand 2 Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Henri Dunant Road, Wang Mai, Pathum Wan District, Bangkok 10330, Thailand 3 Center of Development Economics Studies, National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA), Serithai Road, Klong-Chan, Bangkapi, Bangkok 10240, Thailand Correspondence should be addressed to Piriya Pholphirul; pholphir@hotmail.com Received 19 April 2022; Revised 25 May 2022; Accepted 20 April 2023; Published 8 May 2023 Academic Editor: Zheng Yan Copyright © 2023 Veera Bhatiasevi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The popularity of gaming has greatly increased, especially among children and adolescents. As such, spending too much time playing games has become a serious issue and may have adverse effects on the quality of life of adolescents. This paper is aimed at identifying the factors and degree of influence that leads to gaming addiction and its impact on the quality of life of Thai adolescents. Data were collected from 2,044 adolescents in the form of a questionnaire from five major regions in Thailand, in both municipal and nonmunicipal areas. Structural equation modeling and the neural network model were used to analyze the data. The results indicate some differences between boys and girls as to what factors lead to gaming addiction. But gaming addiction was found to have a negative impact on the quality of life for both genders. Discussions comprising both academic and practical perspectives are also presented. 1. Introduction After the economic bubble burst in the late 1990s, almost all Internet-related industries, with the exception of the computer game industry, online games, video games, and portable games, experienced a recession [1]. Since then, the Internet has greatly influenced people’s daily lives—through email, instant messaging, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and a plethora of similar applications. In some cases, people have even become addicted to playing online games, especially nowadays as more of them have access to high-speed Inter- net [2]. Along with browsing and instantaneous communication with friends, parents, and others, high-speed Internet has greatly increased the popularity of online gaming, which has become an important part of the lives of many young people [3]. Moreover, as the popularity of online gaming continues to increase, concerns about excessive Internet usage has also increased, similar to concerns with regard to drug or alcohol addiction [4]. Indeed, game addicts show telltale signs of addiction by, for example, being obsessed with playing games all the time, isolating themselves from society in order to play games, and playing games to escape the real world pressures confronting them [5, 6]. For exam- ple, in the US, online gamers spend an average of 1-2 hours per day on their computers, more time at video game con- soles, and between 6-10 hours per week on portable video game players. Therefore, it is evident that excessive game play can occur on many different platforms [7]. But it is not just online games that are popular with players around the world; the offline gaming industry is also growing rapidly. For example, Wii Sport, with worldwide sales of 82.65 million units, is an offline game played on Wii video game consoles, and offline games Minecraft and Hindawi Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies Volume 2023, Article ID 7898600, 16 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2023/7898600