Internet gaming is becoming increasingly popular; however, children and adolescents are highly vulnerable to gaming disorder due to the underdevelopment of cognitive control. Longitudinal research providing empirical evidence confirming the stability and direction of the association between self-control and gaming disorder is scarce. This study is aimed at clarifying whether prospective relationships exist between self-control and gaming disorder in children and adolescents or whether they are associated due to common causes. We examined the temporal dynamics of the associations between self-control and gaming disorder symptom severity using a traditional cross-lagged panel model (CLPM; aggregating between- and within-person variance) and a random intercept CLPM (RI-CLPM; disaggregating between- and within-person effects) with three-annual wave data from a large cohort of primary and secondary students (N = 1359, mean age 12.67 (SD 1.40), 834 (61.7%) girls). The traditional CLPM indicated a unidirectional negative relationship from self-control to later gaming disorder (B with 95% confidence interval [CI] = − 0.12 [− 0.19, − 0.040]), whereas the RI-CLPM analysis revealed no prospective relationship between self-control and gaming disorder (95% CIs of Bs all contain 0), indicating that self-control was neither the cause nor the result of gaming disorder in children and adolescents. Our study revealed that the nature of the relationship between self-control and gaming disorder tends to be correlational but not causal. The potential common underlying factors for future research are discussed.

网络游戏变得越来越流行；然而，由于认知控制能力不发达，儿童和青少年极易患游戏障碍。提供实证证据来证实自我控制与游戏障碍之间关联的稳定性和方向的纵向研究很少。本研究旨在澄清儿童和青少年的自我控制与游戏障碍之间是否存在前瞻性关系，或者它们是否因共同原因而相关。我们使用传统的交叉滞后面板模型（CLPM；汇总人与人之间的方差）和随机截距 CLPM（RI-CLPM；分解之间的方差）检查了自我控制与游戏障碍症状严重程度之间关联的时间动态。和人内效应），使用来自大量中小学​​生的三年期波数据（N  = 1359，平均年龄 12.67（SD 1.40），834 名（61.7%）女孩）。传统的 CLPM 表明从自我控制到后来的游戏障碍存在单向负相关关系（B，95% 置信区间 [CI] = − 0.12 [− 0.19, − 0.040]），而 RI-CLPM 分析显示自我控制与后来的游戏障碍之间没有前瞻性关系。 -控制和游戏障碍（ B的 95% CI均包含 0），表明自我控制既不是儿童和青少年游戏障碍的原因，也不是结果。我们的研究表明，自控力和游戏障碍之间的关系本质上是相关的，但不是因果关系。讨论了未来研究的潜在共同基础因素。