Investigation of the relationship between digital game addiction and social emotional learning skills of university students

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of digital game addiction on the social-emotional learning skills of university students. The research employed the relational screening model, one of the quantitative research methods. The sample consisted of 253 pre-service teachers with a mean age of 20.79 (SD = 1.786), ranging from 17 to 25 years. The majority of the participants were female (73.9%, n = 187), while male participants made up 26.1% (n = 66). The study sample was drawn from students of the Faculties of Education at Kütahya Dumlupınar University, Gaziantep University, and Kilis 7 Aralık University.As data collection tools, the "Digital Game Addiction Scale for University Students" developed by Hazar and Hazar (2019) and the Social Emotional Learning Scale originally developed by Kabakçı and Korkut (2008)— adapted for university students by Kocakülah and Kırtak-Ad (2015)were utilized.In the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics, independent samples t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Tukey HSD for multiple comparisons, Mann-Whitney U test for two independent groups, and Kruskal-Wallis test for more than two independent groups were used.The findings indicated that digital game addiction levels differed significantly by gender, income level, academic department, gaming frequency, and place of residence. Furthermore, a significant but weak negative correlation was found between digital game addiction and social-emotional learning skills among university students.