The Open Public Health Journal
NEWS RELEASE: 30-07-2026
A recent survey-based study of medical students across Jordan has found that those who meet the criteria for mobile gaming addiction are significantly more likely to experience pain in their neck, upper back, elbows, and wrists — and that elbow pain in particular is more than four times more common in addicted students than in their non-addicted peers, even after accounting for age, gender, and body measurements.
Researchers from the Department of Basic Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Al-Balqa Applied University, As-salt, Jordan, led by Aya Al-Tamimi (coreesponding author), Ala'a M. Shurrab, Balsam Adnan Alsaify, Aya Al-Badarneh, Shukry Hani Shukry Masoud, and Shawkat Al Tamimi have co-authored the study, "Investigating Mobile Gaming Addiction and Musculoskeletal Pain: A Cross-Sectional Study Among Medical Students in Jordanian Universities," in The Open Public Health Journal.
Why Medical Students Are a High-Risk Group
Mobile gaming has grown rapidly among university-age populations worldwide, and the concerns it raises extend well beyond academic distraction. The World Health Organization formally classified gaming disorder as a recognised mental health condition in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases, acknowledging the mounting evidence that compulsive gaming carries real health costs. What has received far less attention is the physical side of that cost — specifically, the strain that hours of holding a mobile device in fixed, often awkward positions places on the muscles and joints of the upper body.
Medical students represent a particularly vulnerable group in this context. They already spend long hours bent over textbooks and screens for their studies, which places their necks, shoulders, and backs under cumulative postural stress.
When recreational gaming is added on top of that, the cumulative physical burden on the upper body may be substantially greater than in students from less academically demanding programmes. Despite this, no prior study had examined the relationship between mobile gaming addiction and specific musculoskeletal pain regions in Jordanian medical students — a gap this study set out to fill.
Addicted Students Reported Far Higher Pain Rates Across Multiple Body Regions
The research team surveyed 364 medical students from Jordanian universities in April 2025, using two validated questionnaires — the 7-item Gaming Addiction Scale and the Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire — to assess gaming addiction status and the presence, frequency, and functional impact of pain across nine body regions over the preceding seven days and twelve months. Of the 364 participants, 9% — 34 students — met the criteria for mobile gaming addiction based on their responses. Exactly half of all participants reported experiencing some form of musculoskeletal pain in the prior seven days, but the distribution of that pain was strikingly different between addicted and non-addicted students.
Among addicted students, 85.3% reported neck pain compared to 65.0% in non-addicted students; upper back pain was reported by 64.7% of addicts versus 55.0% of non-addicts; elbow pain by 41.2% versus 12.5%; and wrist or hand pain by 41.2% versus 34.0%. Addicted students were also more likely to report that their pain interfered with studying, hobbies, and daily activities, and they made more healthcare visits for musculoskeletal complaints.
When the researchers applied binary logistic regression — a statistical method that isolates the contribution of specific variables while controlling for others — two pain locations retained a statistically significant independent association with gaming addiction after adjusting for age, gender, weight, and height: neck pain, with addicted students having more than three times the odds of reporting it (AOR = 3.22), and elbow pain, with addicted students having more than four times the odds (AOR = 4.64, p < 0.001).
The elbow finding has a plausible physical explanation: holding a mobile device for extended periods involves sustained gripping, fixed forearm positions, and repetitive small movements that place disproportionate stress on the muscles and soft tissue structures around the elbow joint, potentially compressing the ulnar nerve at the inner elbow and placing excessive load on the forearm extensor muscles. Neither gender nor academic year showed a statistically significant association with addiction status, suggesting that gaming intensity — how many hours per day, how many years, and how much money spent on games — was a stronger predictor of addiction than any demographic characteristic.
What This Means for Universities, Health Educators, and Students
The findings carry a direct practical message for medical schools and student health services: mobile gaming addiction is not only a behavioural or academic concern but also a physical health issue that is showing up in the bodies of students who are, ironically, training to become doctors. The pain associated with addictive gaming behaviour is not trivial — it is interfering with daily activities and driving students to seek medical care. Persistent musculoskeletal pain in the neck, elbows, and wrists during medical training is also a concern for future professional functioning, given that clinical work requires sustained physical endurance and fine motor precision.
The authors call for universities to integrate ergonomics education and digital health awareness into student wellness programmes, to encourage regular breaks during both study and gaming sessions, and to make counselling support available for students using mobile games as a way of coping with academic stress.
The authors remian frank about the limitations of their study, noting that the cross-sectional design means it cannot establish whether gaming causes the pain, or whether students already in pain are more likely to gravitate toward sedentary recreational activities such as gaming. Self-reported data carry the usual risks of recall and social desirability bias, and the sample was limited to medical students at Jordanian universities, which constrains how broadly the findings can be applied. Longitudinal studies incorporating objective posture assessment and clinical measurement are the clear next step.
Article title: Investigating Mobile Gaming Addiction and Musculoskeletal Pain: A Cross-Sectional Study Among Medical Students in Jordanian Universities
DOI: 10.2174/0118749445433727251217102135
Read the published article here: https://bit.ly/4ckwsrU
The Open Public Health Journal
10.2174/0118749445433727251217102135
Investigating Mobile Gaming Addiction and Musculoskeletal Pain: A Cross-Sectional Study Among Medical Students in Jordanian Universities