Communication Research Methods

Research Final Project

Topic: Mobile Games and Sociability among Hong Kong Youth

 Index

1. Executive Summary

2. Research Objective

3. Introduction of hypothesis and Literature Review

4. Methodology

5. Interpretation and Discussion

6. Findings

7. New Findings

8. Recommendation

9. Limitation

10. Conclusion

11. References

12. Appendix

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1. Executive Summary

Our topic is “Mobile Games and Sociability among Hong Kong Youth”. Stepping into the
21st century, with the increasing technological improvement, gaming is not only limited on
computer or television, but also playing on mobile devices. Technological improvement is
undoubtedly a great news to our society, but when it comes to the impacts on children, it may
need to be further discussed on this research. Throughout this research, we would dig deeper
into the relationship between mobile gaming and the sociability among Hong Kong teenagers
nowadays. More and more children are addicted to mobile gaming nowadays, we could see
children playing mobile phone everywhere and anytime. However, is it a phenomenon caused
by low sociability? While many teenagers were said to be lack of sociability and what cause
to this is addiction to mobile gaming. Many may say that teenagers lost the ability to
communicate with others as they only focus on mobile gaming while ignoring others. In this
research, we would study that whether addicted to mobile gaming is the main reason to low
sociability or not through different test and hypotheses setting.

We set up five hypotheses. Which are the higher the time spent on social media, the higher

the tendency to play mobile game; the higher the time spent on mobile game, the lower the

frequency of meeting with friends; the higher the number of game friends, the lower the level

of social anxiety; the higher the number of game friends, the higher the level of fear of

isolation and the higher frequency of using voice chat technology, the higher level of social

motivation. By setting up this five hypothese, we could know more about the correlation

between mobile gaming and sociability of the children in Hong Kong nowadays.

2. Research Objective

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There is plenty of news regarding to the addiction of mobile gaming. A Japan news reported

that the problem of getting addicted to mobile gaming of China rural children is becoming

more and more serious. There are more and more rural left-behind children in China who are

obsessed with the game. According to some surveys, the number of Chinese left-behind

children playing games is 4 to 5 hours per day, and even more than 6 hours are 18.8%.

According to the report, the phenomenon of playing games has become a "trend" among left-

behind children in China. Indulging in mobile games is engulfing a group of children with

poor self-control and lack of family education. As a result, we would like to know that

whether mobile gaming addiction is the cause of low sociability and inform the public to

remedy the situation of playing mobile game.

3. Introduction of Hypotheses & Operatization

According to the CyberPsychology and Behavior’ s research, it states some reasons that why
people continue to play online games. First, when people get the effective personal
interaction with the system or pleasant social interactions with other people connected to the
Internet. Which means that if they have some optimal experiences while playing the games,
their personal interaction can be facilitated by providing appropriate goals, operators and
feedback; social interaction through appropriate communication places and tools.

Our independent variables is mobile games and dependent variables is sociability of youth.
We control the range of the research by setting the range of the mobile games. For example,
the need and want of playing mobile games. Then, study is there any changes on the
sociability of the interviewees, what are the changes and how those mobile games affect their
sociability. So I can conclude that playing mobile game can let the player get the optimal
experience.

For the second one, we can see that along with achievements such as earning points,
progressing, and “level up”. The major reasons for playing MMOs were namely immersion
and escapism (Yee, 2006; Caplan et al., 2009; King et al., 2011), e.g. using the game as a

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mood management tool to cope with negative emotions (Hussain & Griffiths, 2009).
However, playing mobile game is also a kind of social activity, because playing mobile game
usually requires team up, partners. Even you don’t team up with your friends. The game
setting will assign you some imaginary or visual partners so that you can play with or against
others. At the same time, it offers the opportunities to make new friends in the mobile game’s
world . Players often attribute the appeal of online games to the community formed by other
gamers. This is clearly visible on the positive relationship of the number of in-game friends
and the amount of time players invest into the games (Cole & Griffiths, 2007). So I can
conclude that playing mobile game can as a mood management tool.

For the third one, online games are also constitutionally a social activity, opportunities are
offered to make new friends online with you played with or against others. Players often
attribute the appeal of online games to the community formed by other gamers (Cole &
Griffiths, 2007). This is apparently visible on the positive relationship of the number of game
friends and the time invested by the players to the games(Cole & Griffiths, 2007). It has been
found that there are emotional and behavioural investment , and not only in terms of quantity
of friends. Caplan and colleagues (2009) found that one of the powerful prognosticator of
medicinal gaming was the use of voice-chat technology – this is inherently used in a very
social style of game play and this technology are used by the players to interact with others in
the game more competently. On the other hand, however, the same study found no significant
relationship between social motivation and medicinal gaming (Caplan et al., 2009) - a finding
also supported by Kardefelt-Winther (2014). But we would like to investigate about this
phenomenon among Hong Kong teenagers to see if there are any significance.

Through different literature reviews, we have concluded some concepts. As a result, we have
set these hypothesis

H1 the higher the time spent on social media, the higher the tendency to play
mobile game

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H2 the higher the time spent on mobile game, the lower the frequency of meeting with
family members / relatives / friends in person each week

H3 the higher the number of game friends, the lower the level of social anxiety

H4 the higher the number of game friends, the lower the level of fear of isolation

H5 the higher frequency of using voice chat technology, the higher level of social
motivation

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4. Methodology

The survey is about mobile games and sociability among Hong Kong youth. It aims to find out
the level of sociability of Hong Kong youth while spending more time on mobile games, as
well as having more friends in game, may be lower.

4.1 Research mothed

The survey used web mode. The reason we use web mode is because respondent may feel more
comfortable to answer the survey in front of their mobile instead of people. There are lots of
reasons. Convenient way for respondent to participant which variety of people can reduce the
limitation, such as time. It reduced survey cost and easier to manage than a paper mode.

4.2 Sample Design

Our target sample is generally following “Hong Kong 2016 Population By-census - Thematic
Report : Youths” ‘s definition of Hong Kong youth: youths refer to population aged 15 to 24
for both sexes. Also, youth who played mobile game and used social media platform.

Our sampling strategy was to send the survey thought any social media platform. It helps to
increase the percentage of respondent hit rate.

4.3 Questionnaire Design

According to the above hypothesis, there are four parts in the survey. Part I : Social Media
Usage is to select the right sample. It shows the frequency of youth using social media and to
know the relationship between social media and mobile game. Part II : Mobile Games and
Social Situations shows the frequency of youth playing mobile game. Also, we can know the
relationship between mobile game and family relationship and friendship. Part III : Mobile
Games and Personal Sociability shows the level of social effect that respondent motivated by
mobile game and friends in it. We can know the relationship between sociability and mobile
game. Part IV : Respondent’s Background was mainly for record their age and gender.

A draft questionnaire was prepared by our group in mid-November. We reviewed it. Then
reordered and divided the questions in to four part. Section introductions was also added.

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5. Interpretation and Discussion

There are some claims and expectation through the discussion among group mates and the

common people.

Both hypothesis 1 and 2 are expected. It means that the higher the time the youth engage in

social media, the higher of tendency they play mobile games, and thus the the frequency they

meet their families and friends.

One important reason behind that drives the development of mobile games is the emergence

of technology and promotion of smart phones (Rangaswamy and Cutrell, 2012). Furthermore,

these smart phones have their own operating systems and related app stores, both of which

own a rather large user group. When users view the promotion of the mobile games, they

would click into the game and try to play it. This makes more and more social media users

engage in mobile games and reflected that the higher the time they engage in social media,

the higher the tendency they are attracted through the promotion or advertisement of causal

game in mobile devices.

Most respondents are expected to reply that the more the time they spend on mobile game,

the lower the frequency they meet their families, relatives and friends per week. When they

engaged more in mobile games, the times meeting their families and friends become less.

According to the literature review, when they are addicted to mobile gaming, they would like

to get achievement from the games by earning points, progressing and levelling, which helps

them maintain a positive emotions. Also, Players may be forced to go on even after playing

for a long period of time as they do not want to let their team members down. They would

focus on the games instead of hanging out with others as they do not want to exit from the

games. This phenomenon in fact lower their bonding with their families and friends and

adversely influence their sociability.

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Hypothesis 3-4

Both hypothesis 3-4 is also expected. It means the higher the number of game friends, the

lower the level of social anxiety, and the lower the level of fear of isolation.

One root cause behind is peer pressure under group games. Group games and the massively
multiplayer role playing games have been identified as risk factors of addiction (Hsu et al.
2009; van Rooij et al. 2011) because the gamers are reluctant to stop playing the game. They
have to form alliance to fight against the opposing team and enemies. For instance,
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), Arena of Valor, IDENTITY-V, and Pokemon Go
etc. For the game users, the more game friends they got means the more reliance they have
when they involve in a battle, that they would not be alone from fighting against their
“enemies”. This revealed that Youth tend to build up their friend zone or relationship online
and most of them construct a thought that how sociable of them depends on how many online
friends they got. The level of social anxiety thus fear of isolation is than lower.

Hypothesis 5

According to the result, hypothesis 5 is supported, which means the higher the frequency they

use the conversation function in mobile game, the lower the level they result in social

anxiety.

With the advanced technology, many mobile games added the conversation functions, with

the aim of increasing the communication between users when they are involving in the game.

According to the Cyberpsychology and Behaviors’ research in optimal experiences from the

above literature review, people get a more effective personal interaction through the chat

function when having battle games. An effective chat during games facilitate users running a

smoother game by interacting appropriate goals, operators and feedbacks.

According to the result, most of the respondents agreed that the conversation function of

mobile games can raise the communication of them with their friends and this alleviate the

problem of social anxiety of the heavy users as they can at least talk with others through

playing games.

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However, our discussion might not be truly correct. Some of the hypothesis are not supported

in the result we found by SPSS. The result will be explained in the following section.

6. Findings

For the five hypothesis, they are combined in the SPSS method to discover the relationships
among. Unders N=119 questionnaires we had. There are the new findings we found.

The Pearson Correlation is the number we have for the relation. Sig < 0.05 will be a show
that there is a significant relation between two variables. There are the findings:

Firstly, the more teenagers use social media platforms, it does not mean the more they play
on the mobile games. With Pearson Correlation = 4%, Sig = 0.666. They do not have a
specific relationship. The more the teenagers comments and share posts about mobile games
on social media, there is no such tendency to support them playing mobile games from this.
With Pearson Correlation = 14.1%, Sig = 0.127.

Secondly, there is no proof of playing mobile games frequently will lower the time they
spend with their families or friends from the research. With Pearson Correlation = 4.1%, Sig
= 0.659. There is no big effect for teenagers to reunion with people they are close to because
of the times of playing mobile games.

Thirdly, the frequency of teenagers mobile games are making teenagers to feel social anxiety
or pressure is not truly correct too. For the social pressure and the playing frequency, with
Pearson Correlation = 5.5%, Sig = 0.549, the results shows no great relationship. For the
social anxiety and the playing frequency, with Pearson Correlation = 5.2%, Sig = 0.573, the
numbers are even higher. That means playing mobile games do not really have effect on the
social feelings, including anxiety and pressure for teenagers.

Last not but least, the result of teenagers using audio function in the mobile games have a
significant relations with the help of enhancing their social skills. With the Pearson
Correlation = 26%, Sig = 0.004. It shows a big relation among these two variables.

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To conclude, lots of the expectation people claims or even in the literature review is not
100% correct. The world changes, people changes, educational methods changes. Any single
one of the changes might affect the behaviors of the teenagers. In the result above, the only
hypothesis is able to be proof is the audio functions of the mobile games actually affect the
social skills of teenagers. The most common expectations and the discussion cannot be proof
and they are not accurate like we believer. However, the samples and the number of
questionnaires have only 119, it might be a enough number of research and it is believer the
size of the sample affect the findings.

7. New Findings

Although the hypothesis 1-4 above are not supported from the result, we have some new
findings by using the correlation.

Firstly, the participation in mobile games because of your friends’ convention in social media
and the teenagers enjoy the world in mobile games more than reality have positive
relationship with Pearson Correlation = 35.7%, Sig = 0.000. The result shows that peer is one
of the factor lead teenagers play mobile games and they would enjoy the world of it more
than the reality.
Secondly, the participation in mobile games because of your friends’ convention in social
media and lower the level of anxiety also have positive relationship with Pearson Correlation
= 28.9%, Sig = 0.001. The result show that friends’ convention in social media will lower
teenagers social anxiety as it is a social event for them which could enhance their sociability.

8. Recommendation

As we have mentioned at our topic, sociability is the main feature of adult life.

However, with the popularity of mobile games, teenagers are more addicted to it and

are putting less time in the society. But is it really true that mobile games will be the

barrier of sociability among teenagers? According to our result, we found that mobile

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games can somehow improve and enhance the sociability of the teenagers. Also, there

are some recommendations for improving teenager sociability through mobile games.

Firstly, teenagers should make good use of the voice chat function inside the mobile

games. We found that nowadays, most mobile games have voice chat function for

players to chat with each other, so that they can communicate with each other for

better experience of gaming. According to our results, we found that most of the

teenagers who have played mobile games will make use of their voice chat function in

order to communicate with the team mates, so that they can get a better experience.

Also, most interviewees said that the voice chat function can improve their sociability.

Therefore, we think that teenagers who played mobile games should make good use of

the voice chat function so that they can get better sociability.

Secondly, we found that teenagers who played mobile games are not likely influenced by

social media and peers. Playing the mobile games with friends and peers can also improve the

teenager sociability, because they can communicate with each other inside the game and also

outside the game, they can communicate and talk about the games or other things in the real

world. Teenager also can know some more new friends in social media, they can play with

friends that they don’t know. In the process of communicating inside the games, they can

enhance their sociability through gaming.

Lastly, according to our results, we also found that teenager spending more time on mobile

games with their friends and enjoy the mobile games world more than real world. Although

playing mobile games can somehow enhance teenagers’ sociability, but at the same time,

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they may get less time to communicate with others and escape the the real world by playing

mobile games. This somehow also affect their sociability in the actual world. Therefore,

teenager should be self-discipline in playing mobile games, also their parents should also

control the time they spend on mobile games.

9. Limitation

Since our size our sample only have around 100, it is a relatively a small size of sample

which could not cover the whole range of teenagers. The opinions from the survey did not

represent the whole range of teenagers as it cover around 18-23 years old only.

10. Conclusion

With the advent of the information age and technology, Gaming is not only limited from PC

or TV, but also the mobile phone, which is the device people using everyday or even every

moment. From the result and significance, we can conclude that the number of lack of

sociability among youth is rising and one of the main reasons behind is the addiction to

mobile gaming. Youth is the future of our society, all of us have the responsibility to face up

to the problem. If we discover people in our surrounding fell from the sociability issue, we

should give them more care and love, to help them get rid of the problem.

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11. References

1. Census and Statistics Department (12 Feb 2018). Hong Kong 2016 Population By-
census - Thematic Report : Youths. Retrieved from
https://www.bycensus2016.gov.hk/data/16BC_Youth_report_2018.02.12.pdf
2. Time out(13 June 2016). - How video game addiction is affecting Hong Kong's youth
By y Hannah Hodson
Retrieved from: https://www.timeout.com/hong-kong/blog/how-video-game-
addiction-is-affecting-hong-kongs-youth-061316
3. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace(2014). -The role
of social motivation and sociability of gamers in online game addiction By Lukas
Blinka1, Jakub Mikuška2 Retrieved from:
https://cyberpsychology.eu/article/view/4309/3358
4. Facebook Discovers Yet Another Data Access Bug, Exposing User Content
https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/facebook-discovers-yet-another-data-
access-bug-exposing-user-content/544448/
5. How Cellphone Use Can Disconnect Your Relationship
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201501/how-
cellphone-use-can-disconnect-your-relationship
6. Social Media & Mobile Internet Use among Teens and Young Adults. Millennials
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED525056
7. Why do people play mobile social games? An examination of network externalities
and of uses and gratifications
https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/IntR-04-2013-0082
8. Mobile game or program distribution
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20070105627A1/en

9. Consumer Attitudinal Insights about Social Media Advertising: A South Asian

Perspective
http://www.rejournal.eu/sites/rejournal.versatech.ro/files/articole/2012-09-
01/2014/young20imran.pdf
10. Digital and Social Media In the Purchase Decision Process
http://www.journalofadvertisingresearch.com/content/52/4/479

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12. Appendix
問卷調查︰手機遊戲與青少年社交能力的關係

您好，我們是恒生管理學院新聞及傳播學系三年級學生。此問卷旨在調查手機遊戲如何
影響香港青少年的社交能力。調查結果有助我們了解如何利用社教媒體推動社交能力的發展。
問卷數據只用於學術用途，資料會保密處理。您只需使用五分鐘便可完成問卷，謝謝！

第一部份︰社交媒體使用情況
(社交媒體是指以網絡為基礎的平台，提供互動、對話分享相片、短片、超連結等等功能。)

1. 您有否使用社交媒體？ 否 O (謝謝，問卷已完成！) 有 O

2. 你有沒有在社交媒體閱讀有關手機遊戲的資料？
否 O (謝謝，問卷已完成！) 有 O
3. 請細閱問題，然後評分，5為頻密，1為甚少。

問題 5 4 3 2 1

你在最近一個月內，使用社交媒體的頻密
程度？

對於手機遊戲議題，你會否在社交媒體與
其他人交流意見(如留言和分享轉發)？

於社交媒體瀏覽到手機遊戲議題後，你會
否因此在現實生活與其他人交流意見？

使用社交媒體時，你曾因為朋友的號召而
參與手機遊戲？例如傳說對決、食雞、第五
人格等等。

社交媒體平台增加你玩手機遊戲的慾望

第二部份︰手機遊戲與社交情況

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請細閱問題，然後評分，5為頻密，1為甚少。

問題 5 4 3 2 1

你在最近一個月內，玩手機遊戲的頻密程
度？

與朋友聚會時，連線玩手機遊戲頻密程度
？

於玩手機遊戲議題後，你會否因此減少與
家人／朋友的相處時間？

你是否曾使用手機遊戲中的語音對話功能
？

你認為手機遊戲中的語音對話功能可以推
動社交能力？

第三部份︰手機遊戲與個人社交能力

4. 以下情況 (5=非常同意, 1=非常不同意)

5 4 3 2 1

我於手機遊戲的朋友愈多，我愈不感到被孤立 O O O O O

我於手機遊戲的朋友愈多 我愈不感到有社交壓力 O O O O O

我享受手遊世界多於現實世界 O O O O O

經常玩手機遊戲令我對社交產生恐懼 O O O O O

如果有一天不能接觸手機遊戲，我會感到鬱悶和 O O O O O

煩躁

我不擅於與人溝通

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第四部份︰個人資料

6. 年齡︰ _____

7. 性別: (1) 男性 O (2) 女性 O

8. 您家庭每月總收入是多少？
(1) $0 - $15000 O (2) $15001 - $30000 O
(3) $30001 - $45000 O (4) $45001 或以上 O

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New Findings

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