An Emerging Mental Health Concern: Risk Factors, Symptoms, and Impact of Internet Gaming Disorder Georgekutty Kuriala Kochuchakkalackal 1,2 & Marc Eric S. Reyes 3 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 Abstract Internet gaming disorder (IGD) is an emerging mental health condition in increasing number of countries as it leads to a variety of negative consequences and poor psychological well-being among adolescents. The awareness and understanding of the risk factors, symptoms, and impact of IGD are relevant to its proper diagnosis and treatment. The purpose of this study is to highlight these risk factors based on existing literature that contribute to IGD including its symptoms and impact on the life of the adolescents. Relevant findings were drawn through a scoping review on IGD pertaining to its risk factors, symptoms including neurological dimension, and impact among adolescents. A synthesis of results on studies pertaining to IGD shed light on the priority afforded to IGD and aims to raise awareness on this serious current health issue affecting a vulnerable group of young people. Keywords Internet gaming disorder . Adolescents . Online game . Addiction . Mental health . Pathological gaming Introduction Internet gaming has become the leisure activity of the modern era. It all started from the use of the internet which also has become an integral part of people’ s daily lives (APA 2013; Castellaci and Tveito 2018; Soh et al. 2018). With the growth of personal computers, mobile phones, and access to the in- ternet since the 2000s, internet gaming gained popularity mostly among adolescents. The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) data in 2017 showed the exponential growth in internet users to more than three billion. Online were 830 million young people or 80% of the youth population in 104 countries according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the United Nation’ s spe- cialized agency on ICTs. Further, the ICT data showed that up to 35% of individuals using the internet are aged 15–24, which are mostly adolescents; and in China and India alone, up to 320 million young people have used the internet (International Telecommunications Union 2017). Over the years, internet games have grown into great pro- portion and lured players into long hours of gaming and some played uncontrollably (Kuss 2013). This problematic gaming resulted in self-harming behaviors and abandonment of daily life activities such as less sleep, isolation, and poor academic standing among the adolescents. In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) used the term internet gaming disorder (IGD) to refer to the problematic behavior of online gaming. Seeing IGD’ s potential to becoming a health issue, it was included in the latest 2013 update of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual fifth edition (DSM-5) of mental disorders in the research appendix (Section III) as a condition requiring further study (APA 2013, p. 796) before being classified as an official mental disorder. To help clinicians assess the pres- ence of the disorder, nine symptoms based on the presented evidences of current studies that time were preliminarily used. Based on review of existing literature, many scholars and clinicians studied the phenomenon of IGD as it led to negative outcomes and poor psychological well-being mostly affecting adolescents (Gonzales-Bueso et al. 2018; Stavropoulos et al. 2017; Subramaniam et al. 2016). IGD has become a significant health and social concern affecting an increasing number of countries. In mid-2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized IGD as an emerging issue of public health and included it in the * Georgekutty Kuriala Kochuchakkalackal georgekutty.kochuchakkalackal.gs@ust.edu.ph; frgeorgekuttymcbs@gmail.com 1 The Graduate School, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines 2 College of Medicine, Emilio Aguinaldo College, Manila, Philippines 3 College of Sciences, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science https://doi.org/10.1007/s41347-019-00117-7