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Introduction: Online games have affected the lives of many people, including students. Playing for a long time is associated with self-control and sleep quality. The purpose of this study was to compare self-control, sleep quality, sexual difference and economic status of students who use problematic and non-problematic online games in West Azerbaijan.
Methods: The research method is descriptive-comparative. The statistical population was all tenth, eleventh and twelfth grade students of West Azerbaijan. The sampling method of this research is multi-stage cluster. Six schools and 36 classes were selected as the final sample of the research. The total number of subjects who use problematic and non-problematic online games was 544. The Research tools include demographic questionnaire, “Tangney’s Self-control Scale”, “Pittsburgh’s Sleep Quality Index”, “Problematic Online Gaming Questionnaire”, Which had validity and reliability confirmed in previous studies. Also, data was analyzed using SPSS software version 24.
Results: In terms of self-control, students who use problematic online games are weaker than students who use non-problematic online games (P≥0.01). Among the dimensions related to sleep quality, people who use problematic online games have a lower mental quality of sleep (P ≥ 0.01); have sleep disturbances and day time dysfunctions (P ≥ 0.01). In terms of gender, boy students were more problematic on online games than girls (P≥0.05). However, in terms of economic status, there was no difference between students who use problematic and non-problematic online games.
Conclusions: Students who use problematic online games are weak in terms of self-control and have a lower quality of sleep, more sleep disturbances and more day time dysfunctions. Therefore, it is suggested that by training behavior self-control, which leads to the implementation of self-monitoring, self-assessment and self-reinforcement methods, strengthen self-control and sleep quality in students.