Daniel King is our leading researcher on addiction
Daniel King from Flinders University is Australia’s top researcher on addiction
What began with bulky arcade machines in game parlours has evolved into immersive, realistic online worlds that players can access with a tap on a smartphone.
Daniel King, a leading researcher in gaming addiction, says millions enjoy gaming as a recreational pastime, but for some, it has become an addiction. Young males are most commonly affected, Addiction can affect education, career prospects and relationships. “The big picture of our research is trying to understand how people become hooked on digital technologies, particularly gaming, gambling and social media,” says King, a clinical psychologist and a professor at Flinders University who is named in The Australian’s 2026 Research magazine as the top researcher in the field of addiction.
“What are the factors that drive problems with gaming for some people? What are the most effective ways to identify, prevent and respond to these issues? That’s the big challenge we have now and will continue to have in the future as digital tech evolves.”
King first became interested in the field at university in the early 2000s, just as online gaming was taking off, noticing the huge appeal gaming had for his fellow students.
When he did his PhD in 2006 at the University of Adelaide, his supervisor Paul Delfabbro, a professor in psychology, had an interest in gambling research and the pair continued to collaborate, in part because there was so much crossover between the two disorders – gambling and gaming.
Since then, games have become more immersive, more social, more connected – and far more portable, King says.
In the 1980s, the activity took place in arcade parlours, but by the 1990s, the rise of home consoles brought games into the family living room, then the teenage bedroom.
“Once it went online, around the early 2000s, I think that’s when people really started to make it more a part of their life,” King says. “These games offered players a new identity and new friendships in 24/7 living worlds, essentially.”
Over the past 15 years, so-called “massively multiplayer online games’’ have become enormously popular, allowing players to create characters, develop personas and interact with others in virtual environments across the globe.
These games come in a huge variety, supported by large online communities. Players collaborate and compete to complete quests, problem-solve or optimise their chances.
A recent major innovation has been the rise of loot boxes and microtransactions, which are opportunities to continuously spend small amounts of real money in the game, which has the potential for financial harms similar to gambling, King says.
In 2019, the World Health Organisation officially recognised gaming addiction as a disorder. King says it affects between 1 and 3 per cent of the population. Males are four times more likely to report problem gaming than females.
A key sign a person may have a disorder is that they increasingly prioritise gaming over other activities. “In our surveys, we found that people were consistently giving up sleep to play,” he says. “It then affects their mood, concentration at school or work or study, and overall performance, and then gaming becomes an appealing escape from these issues, creating a vicious cycle.”
King’s current research focus is on creating practical tools to support parents of teenagers affected by problem gaming, and to develop resources for public health bodies.
In 2023, King’s team evaluated the mental health and bullying impact of a South Australian government ban on mobile phone use by students at school. His team now plans to study the federal government’s ban on social media for under-16s, planning to run surveys before and after the policy’s introduction.
“We’re hoping our research provides useful insights into the personal and social impacts of digital technologies, so that families and governments have useful information and ways to effectively address these growing issues,” he says.
