Self-determination is the developmental task (R. Havighurst) in youth leading to personality psychological well-being and health.

The aim was to study the worldview attitudes in Russian youth who are Tolkien fans.

The techniques were completed by 121 students; 17-28 age (M = 21.7; M/F= 35.5 / 64.5 %); 81 (66.9%) subscribers of the Vkontakte communities dedicated to the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. 1. Incomplete Sentences by Sacks-Levy in authors’ version 2. World assumptions scale (R. Janoff-Bulman) (Padun, Kotelnikova, 2007) 3. Purpose-in-Life Test (J. Crumbaugh, L. Maholick) (Leontiev, 2000) 4. The Level of Escapism (Teslavskaya, Savchenko, 2019).

Three groups of respondents differing in their attitude to the literary genre of fantasy («fans», «amateurs», «indifferent») were identified. Respondents consider the world to be moderately benevolent, and fair, and themselves quite good people, able to control most of the events taking place in their lives. They are sure that they are often lucky in life. «Fans» have the highest tendency to escapism, the most pessimistic view of the world, with a more positive image of the person compared to other respondents. «Fans» consider their lives less emotionally rich and productive, compared to the assessment of their lives by peers of other groups.

The level of escapism expression in fantasy literature fans are higher than in respondents who do not distinguish this genre as preferred. A new theoretical and empirical work is that worldviews can be monitored and taken into account in practical psychological working with at-risk young people.

No significant relationships.

Video games are among the most popular leisure time activities. While majority of gamers play in a healthy manner, a minority shows gaming disorder (GD) symptoms and experiences detrimenting effects in their lives. Even though gaming time is moderately associated with gaming disorder symtoms, research suggests that it is not a reliable predictor by itself.

The aim of the present study is to explore whether depression symptoms, self-esteem, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and escapism (when gaming is motivated by the avoidance of everyday problems) moderate the association between gaming time and GD symptoms and whether this is different for boys and girls.

Data was collected from a representative sample of 5th grade students of public education institutions in Budapest. Sample selection was carried out by one-step sampling stratified for school type, district, and maintainer; the sampling unit was the class. Data from 2126 students were analyzed (49.3% male, mean age 10.7 years, SD=0.54).

Depression symptoms moderated the association between gaming time and GD symtoms in both genders. For those with higher depression symptoms the aforementioned association was stronger. Furthermore, self-esteem had a moderator effect only among girls, while escapism motivation and ADHD only among boys. In these cases, the association between gaming time and GD symptoms was stronger among those with lower self-esteem, and higher ADHD and escapism scores.

Results suggest that gaming time is more strongly connected to GD symptoms in certain conditions, but its predictive value is limited even in those cases.

Funding statement: This study was supported by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (KKP126835). Orsolya Király was supported by the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and by the ÚNKP-21-5