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Children and Minecraft: A survey of children’s digital play
Abstract
Digital games such as Minecraft currently hold a position of significance in the media diets of many children. However, little is known explicitly about just who plays, with whom and how. This article presents the quantitative results of a survey of 753 parents of children aged 3–12 years about their child’s engagement with Minecraft. Our results establish Minecraft as the dominant digital game title played by this age group, particularly on tablet devices. We provide evidence of a marked early gendering of children’s Minecraft play and engagement with meta-game material. This research gives particular impetus to efforts aimed at ensuring gender equity in digital game–related cultural spaces inhabited by children. It also highlights the importance of collecting game-specific descriptive information, rather than limiting studies to aggregate measures of ‘screen time’.
... Amos [40] referring to a study with older digital game players, identifies flow as a state that can induce the formation of habits and therefore have the potential to trigger addiction. Mavoa, Carter and Gibbs [41] in their study of primary school aged children's engagement with Minecraft report that the term addiction was commonly used by many parents to explain their child's immersion in the game. However, a further analysis of parent responses identified that this term was used when the child wanted to remain playing longer that the parent wanted them to. ...
... Underpinning this process is the understanding that moral panic responses are not new. Mavoa and colleagues [41] draw on research from the 1960s, where people were exceedingly concerned about the influence of television on children. Here the "addiction" fear related to the fact that television viewing was time consuming and distracted children from reality. ...
... Lowrie and Larkin [1] note that this should be a continuous process with discussions taking place during screen time as well as before and after. Mavoa and colleagues [41] report that families rarely talked with their children about technology engagement but still held onto fears of "addiction". Moving forward there is a need for research with children where they share beliefs and perspectives on their digital experiences and their impact on wellbeing [54], rather than just adult perspective which often predominate [55]. ...
Abstract: For many families, young children’s engagement with screen-based technology is an ongoing concern in terms of physical, social and cognitive development. They are uneasy with the difficulty children have disengaging from screens and concerned that this behavior is obsessive or a sign of addiction. However, technology is recognized as having a “rightful role” in early childhood contexts. This scoping paper reports on a review of literature relating to digital play for children aged birth to five years, with the aim of further understanding digital wellbeing. Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory serves as a theoretical framework for understanding why many young children enjoy digital play and become deeply engaged, with a disconnect between how young children and adults perceive digital play. Concerns about children’s deep immersion with digital play are interrogated to understand the connections with perceived addictive traits. The review highlights the critical importance of supporting children’s agency and digital citizenship skills from a young age, including the ability to critique content, balance screen-time with non-screen time and to develop self-control and self-regulation as a means to promote long-term positive outcomes for children in their digital lifeworlds and beyond.
... questionnaire, scale, report, or survey tool). For instance, in three studies involving parents as a sample, scale (Ihmeideh, 2019), REDCap survey tool (Mavoa, Carter, & Gibbs, 2018), and parent's reports (Huber, Highfield, & Kaufman, 2018) were used for collecting data. A questionnaire was used as a single research instrument for collecting data from teachers in Aldhafeeri, Palaiologou, and Folorunsho (2016) work. ...
... As it is well known, children have a perception of computers and the internet (Mertala, 2020); they use digital apps (Marsh et al., 2018), play with digital games (Arnott, 2016) and play video games (Mavoa et al., 2018). At this point, the important question arises concerning the families' and teachers' perceptions of digital games. ...
... It should be pedagogically considered that even if a limited number of children start to play video games (i.e. Minecraft) from four or five years old, many children (3-9 years) play these games more than they play with LEGO (Mavoa et al., 2018). One of the remarkable results from the study of Mavoa et al. (2018) showed that 11% of 277 participant Australian children aged three to five years played the Minecraft video game, and 55% of these children preferred to play it alone. ...
This study sought an answer to the question whether the digitalization of play is technological mutation or digital evolution. To this end, 14 studies published over the last five years were reviewed and discussed under four themes, namely digital technology and children, parents’, and teachers’ perceptions of digital technology, screen effects, and digital-based learning. The review showed that digital technologies had entered children’s daily lives and digital applications had become an important part of early childhood education programmes. Although digital technologies offer positive contributions to children’s learning and improve some skills (creativity, problem-solving, and even motor development), it seems as a potential danger to reduce children’s play process only to the use of digital games. If this happens, the evolutionary and genetic origin of play, which has an older history than humanity, will be seriously devastated.
... Games and Culture -https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412020913771 -Accepted Version 4 It is important to not understate the central role that YouTube plays in contemporary childhoods and young children's gaming culture, particularly in the Western context (Burgess & Green, 2009 (Mavoa et al. 2018), the following results indicate a shift -particularly for the young boys we interviewed -into a unique cultural niche that bridges youth culture, broader adult 'gaming culture' and children's development of new skills and autonomies in the 'tween' phase. We suggest that this provides a better way to understand digital gaming practices in young people beyond the limitations of an educational framework, and follows Willet's recent emphasis on "the importance of analysing preteens' online gaming from an approach that interrogates the context of gaming practices" (2016). ...
... This was because research conducted by Mavoa et al. (2018) found that Minecraft was played by almost half of children aged 3-12-years (n=753), but began to decrease in popularity, at least for boys, after the age of 11. Thus, recruitment focused on participants who have recently stopped playing Minecraft or significantly reduced the amount of time they played Minecraft. ...
... Andrew watched DanTDM for Minecraft content; while Travis was watching DanTDM for content on the game Subnautica. These examples highlight the crucial -and powerful -role that YouTubers play as cultural intermediaries in contemporary game culture(Taylor, 2018), as they do in youth digital culture more generally (Aran-Ramspott, Fedele & Tarragó, 2018).As has previously been identified in other games such as Minecraft(Dezuanni et al. 2015;Mavoa et al. 2018), all our participants used YouTube as a resource for solving problems and overcoming challenges that were presented in their play. Narrah even described how he used YouTube to install Fortnite on a PC, which was challenging because he had "never downloaded a game like that before. ...
Fortnite is a massively multiplayer online “battle royale” game that rapidly grew in 2018 to become one of the most popular digital games in the world, with a reported peak of 10.8 million concurrent players and 250 million registered players in March 2019. Based on 24 interviews with young people aged 9–14 (17 boys and 7 girls), this article sets out to provide an account of the appeal and experience of Fortnite. While it is impossible to pinpoint exactly why Fortnite has been such a phenomenal, global success, in this article, we argue that its appeal can be better explained by its intersections with YouTube and game livestreaming, the way the game acts as a vehicle for social capital and the performance of identity, and the rich sociality of play.
... Guzen (2021) also noted that as children spend more time in front of screens, their addiction tendencies increase. Studies on the negative effects of screen time on children's development Mavoa et al., 2018; suggest that increased screen time is associated with various addictions in children's later lives. ...
... Güzen (2021) çocukların ekran başında geçirdikleri süre arttıkça bağımlılık eğilimlerinin de arttığını belirtmektedir. Ekran süresinin çocukların gelişimleri üzerindeki olumsuz etkilerine yönelik yapılan çalışmalar Mavoa et al., 2018; artan ekran süresinin çocukların ilerleyen yaşamları da dahil olmak üzere pek çok bağımlılığı beraberinde getirdiğini belirtmektedirler. Okul öncesi dönem çocuklarının sosyal duygusal iyi oluş ve psikolojik sağlamlıkları ile dijital oyun bağımlılık eğilimleri arasındaki ilişkinin incelendiği bu araştırmanın sonuçlarına dayalı olarak araştırmacılar, eğitimciler ve politika yapıcılara yönelik çeşitli öneriler sunulmuştur. ...
This research was conducted to determine the relationship between the social-emotional well-being and psychological resilience of preschool children and their tendencies toward digital play addiction. The study was designed in a correlational survey model. The study group of the research consisted of 324 children attending preschool education institutions in the Rize province. The "Preschool Children's Social-Emotional Well-being and Psychological Resilience Scale" and the "Digital Play Addiction Tendency Scale" were used as data collection tools in the research. As a result of the research, it was found that the levels of social-emotional well-being and psychological resilience of children were high, while tendencies toward digital play addiction were moderate. There was a moderate, negative, and significant relationship between children's social-emotional well-being, psychological resilience, and tendencies toward digital play addiction. Accordingly, as the social-emotional well-being and psychological resilience of children increase, tendencies toward digital play addiction decrease. It was determined that the relationship between children's social-emotional well-being, psychological resilience, and tendencies toward digital play addiction differed based on gender and daily screen time variables but not based on age.
... Guzen (2021) also noted that as children spend more time in front of screens, their addiction tendencies increase. Studies on the negative effects of screen time on children's development Mavoa et al., 2018; suggest that increased screen time is associated with various addictions in children's later lives. ...
... Güzen (2021) çocukların ekran başında geçirdikleri süre arttıkça bağımlılık eğilimlerinin de arttığını belirtmektedir. Ekran süresinin çocukların gelişimleri üzerindeki olumsuz etkilerine yönelik yapılan çalışmalar Mavoa et al., 2018; artan ekran süresinin çocukların ilerleyen yaşamları da dahil olmak üzere pek çok bağımlılığı beraberinde getirdiğini belirtmektedirler. Okul öncesi dönem çocuklarının sosyal duygusal iyi oluş ve psikolojik sağlamlıkları ile dijital oyun bağımlılık eğilimleri arasındaki ilişkinin incelendiği bu araştırmanın sonuçlarına dayalı olarak araştırmacılar, eğitimciler ve politika yapıcılara yönelik çeşitli öneriler sunulmuştur. ...
This research was conducted to determine the relationship between the social-emotional well-being and psychological resilience of preschool children and their tendencies toward digital play addiction. The study was designed in a correlational survey model. The study group of the research consisted of 324 children attending preschool education institutions in the Rize province. The "Preschool Children's Social-Emotional Well-being and Psychological Resilience Scale" and the "Digital Play Addiction Tendency Scale" were used as data collection tools in the research. As a result of the research, it was found that the levels of social-emotional well-being and psychological resilience of children were high, while tendencies toward digital play addiction were moderate. There was a moderate, negative, and significant relationship between children's social-emotional well-being, psychological resilience, and tendencies toward digital play addiction. Accordingly, as the social-emotional well-being and psychological resilience of children increase, tendencies toward digital play addiction decrease. It was determined that the relationship between children's social-emotional well-being, psychological resilience, and tendencies toward digital play addiction differed based on gender and daily screen time variables but not based on age.
Bu araştırma okul öncesi dönem çocuklarının sosyal duygusal iyi oluş ve
psikolojik sağlamlıkları ile dijital oyun bağımlılık eğilimleri arasındaki
ilişkiyi belirlemek amacıyla yürütülmüştür. Çalışma ilişkisel tarama
modelinde tasarlanmıştır. Araştırmanın çalışma grubu Rize ilindeki okul
öncesi eğitim kurumlarına devam eden 324 çocuktan oluşmaktadır.
Araştırmada veri toplama aracı olarak “Okul Öncesi Çocuklar İçin
Sosyal Duygusal İyi Oluş ve Psikolojik Sağlamlık Ölçeği” ve “Dijital
Oyun Bağımlılık Eğilimi Ölçeği” kullanılmıştır. Araştırmanın sonucunda
çocukların sosyal duygusal iyi oluş ve psikolojik sağlamlık düzeylerinin
yüksek olduğu, dijital oyun bağımlılık eğilimlerinin ise orta düzeyde
olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Çocukların sosyal duygusal iyi oluş ve psikolojik
sağlamlıkları ile dijital oyun bağımlılık eğilimleri arasında orta düzeyde,
negatif yönlü ve anlamlı bir ilişki olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Buna göre
çocukların sosyal duygusal iyi oluş ve psikolojik sağlamlıkları arttıkça
dijital oyun bağımlılık eğilimleri azalmaktadır. Çocukların sosyal
duygusal iyi oluş ve psikolojik sağlamlıkları ile dijital oyun bağımlılık
eğilimlerinin cinsiyet ve günlük ekran süresi değişkenlerine göre
farklılaştığı ancak yaş değişkenine göre farklılaşmadığı tespit edilmiştir.
... Moreover, these developmental differences could also be attributed to the types of apps different aged children play with at home, and subsequently the digital play experiences most familiar to them. Research shows that between 4 and 5 years of age there is a sharp increase in the number of children who begin playing the extremely popular game, Minecraft (Mavoa et al., 2018). During Minecraft children explore the game world and build with blocks using an avatar. ...
... As an example, Ramani et al. (2014) found that while boys and girls spent the same amount of time engaging in block play and built equivalently complex structures, girls included more symbolic features (e.g., a window) of the house structure they were building. Similarly, in the digital medium, girls tend to play Minecraft in Creative mode, where the focus is on creating structures using freely available resources, more than boys, who often play in Survival mode, where they must avoid hostile creatures and spend time collecting resources for building (Mavoa et al., 2018). Together, these findings suggest that during either physical or digital block play girls may focus more on what they are building than boys, but more research is still needed. ...
Spatial play contributes to children’s early development of spatial skills, which are foundational for STEM achievement. A growing genre of spatial play for young children is digital block play. We asked how 3- to 6-year-old children (N = 117) engaged in digital block play and whether children’s age, gender, and spatial skills were correlated with this play. Children completed a spatial skills assessment and played a popular digital block play app, Toca Blocks. We developed a coding scheme that measured children’s play behaviors in the app, and reliably detected individual differences in this play. Children actively manipulated the digital blocks, and there were differences in their block play by age and gender. However, children’s spatial skills were not associated with their play in the app. The present work shows that digital block play supports play behaviors similar to those supported by physical blocks, but whether and how digital block play facilitates spatial learning is still unknown. The results are discussed in terms of potential ways to implement digital spatial play apps that might engage children’s spatial skills and support their spatial and STEM learning.
... As of 2018, Minecraft is the dominant title interacted by children ages 3-12 in America from a sample of 753 responses (37% parents of 3-to 5-year-old children, 32% parents of 6-to 8-year-old children, and 31% parents of 9-to 12-year-old children) collected by Mavoa, Carter, and Gibbs (2018). A survey of 753 parents of children ages 3-12 in residing in Melbourne showed that boys were more likely to play Minecraft than girls early on, however this difference is negated at age 9, and the effect is reversed at age 11 likely due to boys moving onto play different game titles (Mavoa et al., 2018). ...
... As of 2018, Minecraft is the dominant title interacted by children ages 3-12 in America from a sample of 753 responses (37% parents of 3-to 5-year-old children, 32% parents of 6-to 8-year-old children, and 31% parents of 9-to 12-year-old children) collected by Mavoa, Carter, and Gibbs (2018). A survey of 753 parents of children ages 3-12 in residing in Melbourne showed that boys were more likely to play Minecraft than girls early on, however this difference is negated at age 9, and the effect is reversed at age 11 likely due to boys moving onto play different game titles (Mavoa et al., 2018). ...
Use this link to cite item: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/110501
In this dissertation, I investigate the extent to which a digital sandbox game that allows for autonomy and peer-to-peer interaction can trigger interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), as well as explore how prior game mastery impacts these changes. The sandbox game, Minecraft, is used as a platform to test whether interest in STEM can be triggered within a digital learning environment for adolescent learners. This study seeks to contribute to our foundational understanding of how interest functions within a digital learning environment.
... We know from previous research that children participate in a variety of Minecraft worlds that offer very different kinds of gameplay (Mavoa, Carter, & Gibbs, 2017), including Minecraft for educational purposes, MinecraftEdu (Beavis, Deuzanni, & O'Mara, 2017). How these experiences make a difference in school is tied to curricula and teacher's attitudes. ...
... Ito et al., 2019). Mavoa et al. (2017) reveal no significant gender differences present in children's (9-12 years of age) overall Minecraft play and therefore out-of-school learning in digital gaming communities could be addressed by investigating girls' gameplay. Thus, learning will be explored by studying girls' situated learning in Minecraft. ...
The aim of this study is to investigate children’s out-of-school learning in digital gaming communities. This was achieved by exploring girls’ participation in Minecraft communities. Data were generated through interviews, video-recorded play sessions and video-stimulated recall. Multimodal interactional analysis was applied in order to analyze children’s mediated actions. The components of Wenger’s Social Theory of Learning were used as a basis when exploring learning in children’s out-of-school digital gaming communities. Five significant themes of what characterizes learning in digital gaming communities were identified: learning through experiencing, learning through belonging, learning through performing, learning through struggling and learning through enacting participatory identities. The main findings are presented in a tentative conceptual framework that can support teachers, school leaders and policymakers who are interested in connecting children’s out-of-school learning experiences with their learning in school.
... Initially, this study was proposed to examine what games children were playing after Minecraft. This extends research conducted by Mavoa et al. [13], who found that Minecraft was played by almost half of children aged 3-12-years (n=753) but began to decrease in popularity, at least for boys, after the age of 11. We were interested in studying the transition from Minecraft, a widely accepted and positively viewed title [12], [13], to more 'difficult' or 'teen' game titles, or away from gaming entirely. ...
... This extends research conducted by Mavoa et al. [13], who found that Minecraft was played by almost half of children aged 3-12-years (n=753) but began to decrease in popularity, at least for boys, after the age of 11. We were interested in studying the transition from Minecraft, a widely accepted and positively viewed title [12], [13], to more 'difficult' or 'teen' game titles, or away from gaming entirely. Thus, recruitment focused on participants who have recently stopped playing Minecraft or significantly reduced the amount of time they played Minecraft. ...
Fortnite is a massively multiplayer online first-person shooter that grew rapidly in 2018 to become one of the world's most popular games, with current estimates of 350 million active players. In this paper we argue that Fortnite's success can-in part-be attributed to the affective sensation of worldness that it creates via its 10 week 'seasons'. Via a study of children's digital play cultures, we discuss the implications of this way of thinking about the spatial, social, and material structures of the gameworld for understanding Fortnite's success, countering discourses of 'videogame addiction', and guiding future research.
... These "discursive dichotomies" [8, p. 40] surrounding the game make it well suited to investigations of parent attitudes, as the lack of clear consensus leaves parents with the task of forming their own constructions and attitudes about the game. We sought parent perspectives on the game Minecraft as part of a larger survey about children's gaming and other screen media use [33]. ...
... Data was collected using the REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) survey tool [54] hosted on The University of Melbourne data centre infrastructure. Questions began with basic demographic information related to the child, then asked about general gaming, followed by a set of Minecraft specific questions, YouTube use, general screen time, and finally basic parent demographic questions [33]. ...
Parent perceptions of game play have a crucial role in forming the context in which children engage with digital games. However, little empirical information is known about these perceptions. The current study addresses this gap by describing a detailed analysis of open text responses by parents about their views on the popular game Minecraft. We show that parents are able to identify a broad range of both positive and negative outcomes associated with the game. We situate these observations within historical discourses about the role of screen media in children's lives, and the way that play itself is valued. Combining the insights from our data with these broader perspectives informs scholars interested in children's digital play and points to design implications.
... Minecraft is hugely popular among children ages 3-12, the peak being between ages 6-8 (Mavoa et al., 2018). However, little is known about children's evolution as they learn to play the game, socialize (e.g., discussion boards, chat rooms), and engage in the meta-game materials (e.g., YouTube) in home settings (Dezuanni, 2018;. ...
This book is aimed at educators, researchers, and designers who want to use games to enhance equity and justice for marginalized students, and create communities where everyone feels like they belong.
For the fourth volume in the Learning, Education & Games book series, we explore 50 games to use for inclusion, equity, justice, diversity, and belongingness. The list of 50 games includes popular ones like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Chess, Minecraft, and Among Us, as well as other commercial, indie, PC, mobile, live-action role-playing (LARP), and card and board games. This list is not exhaustive and is just one small contribution to an important field.
... 10 During the preschool fieldwork, we observed mostly boys either discussing video games or playing them out on the playground, while girls did not, despite some being avid gamers at home. For the age range in question, Minecraft is still mostly played among boys (Mavoa et al., 2018). Accordingly, gendered or racialized refrains from historically unequal practices can manifest through materials and bodies, producing affects that Ahmed (2004) calls "sticky," causing, for example, racist or sexist feelings of disgust, anger, or schadenfreude to linger. ...
Today, digital media technologies are ubiquitous and mundane, making the relationship between digital and analog messy and porous. This postdigital condition prompts new analyses of how young children's local encounters with digital media technologies unfold, and how their relationships with digital media technologies carry on after they leave their devices. While sociomaterial approaches to literacy are apt to study how such messy literacies are enacted through singular events, they struggle to account for consistencies that emerge across events. Plugging into the concept of the refrain, we explore how felt consistencies were produced and scored two boys’ friendship through and across events as they watched YouTube, played Minecraft, and played with construction playthings. We find that felt refrains of “dwelling in novelty” were enacted, referring to the set-up of conditions where materialities acted together to produce affectively intense moments of surprise. As moments accumulated, deeply felt friendships were produced over time.
... Previous studies have investigated gender differences in learners' behavior and outcomes in open-ended learning environments (Chiu, 2020;Khan et al., 2017;Lukosch et al., 2017;Ü nlüsoy et al., 2010) and in Minecraft (Beavis et al., 2014;Hughes et al., 2021;Marsh et al. 2015;Mavoa et al., 2018;Peters et al., 2021). Most of these behaviors were identified using out-of-game data. ...
In this paper, we analyze how male and female learners differ in their in-game behaviors, knowledge assessment outcomes, and STEM interest using the What-If Hypothetical Implementations using Minecraft (WHIMC). We also investigate how male and female learners’ self-reported levels of frustration and boredom relate to these outcomes. We examine in-game data, out-of-game assessment data, self-reported frustration and boredom, and results of the STEM interest questionnaire (SIQ) from 175 Grade 8 learners from a school in the Philippines. We found that male learners tend to explore more than female learners. Both genders learn more through more exploration, making more observations, and completing tasks, but only female learners benefit from having more idle time. Male learners had a higher increase in STEM interest compared to female learners, while there is no significant difference in assessment scores between the genders. This study also found that boredom and frustration have a negative impact on academic outcomes, behavior, and STEM interest, especially among female learners. Bored female learners tend to do less well on post-game assessments, explore less, and make fewer observations. Frustrated female learners tend to not complete the task. Female learners who expressed frustration or boredom tend to have a decreased interest in SIQ in the Interest category after playing WHIMC.
... The open-world sandbox game Minecraft [40] occupies the first position on the Wikipedia video game best-seller list. This game is popular with players of all ages, although one study has asserted that, at least for boys, after the age of 11, interest dwindles [41]. Nevertheless, according to the statistics, it is the best-selling video game of all time, with more than 238 million copies sold and up to 126 million active players in any given month. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic forced the authorities to take an unprecedented measure in history: the house confinement of millions of people worldwide. Video games, especially open-world video games (OWVGs), became meeting spaces, a digital places to play, chat, learn and socialize due to the context of the health crisis, respecting the rules of social distancing. This article analyses the role of video games and, more specifically, OWVGs, as playgrounds and training spaces during the pandemic. Statistical data and analyses carried out by consulting companies and civil associations show the definitive insertion of these video games in our routine and social relations. The challenge is to take advantage of the skills and abilities that these video games develop within a new framework of individual and community learning. The conclusions of the research show that the virtual worlds of video games are for the new digital society, safe and comfortable meeting spaces, and that since the confinement, these digital places have greatly expanded their reach, previously only limited to the gamer community.
... 17 FreeTV Australia (2017). 18 Marsh et al., (2019).. 19 Mavoa et al. (2017). 20 Foster (2019). ...
It is useful to think about the digital products, services, and content that children experience online as the Children’s Internet. There are numerous things we can do to create a better Children’s Internet for the future.
As a society, we will benefit from an ongoing public conversation about how to create better children’s internet experiences. After all, a better Children’s Internet makes a better Internet for all, prompting us to consider what it really means to have fun, productive, safe, diverse and ethical internet experiences.
The purpose of this document, then, is to investigate the elements and characteristics of the Children’s Internet and to show how to make it better for future generations of children. In particular, we are interested in the following, noting that these form the basis for the six sections of this document:
Accessing the Children’s Internet. Children access the internet through an array of digital products, services, and content that are both specifically made for children, and not intentionally made for them. Importantly, not all children have the same access to the internet and digital experiences.
Imagining the Children’s Internet. As a society, we tend to imagine that children should have particular kinds of internet experiences. These imaginaries appear in public, media, and policy discussions and debates about children’s internet use. These discussions, however, are often polarised between the risks and opportunities for children being online and often fail to reflect the realities of children’s internet experiences.
The Children’s Internet as commercialised entertainment. Children’s entertainment and social connections are shaped by commercialised technology and media industries. The media and entertainment environment is now more complex than ever and structured through an ever expanding range of business models, which families have to navigate.
The Children’s Internet as commercialised learning and education. Technology is often promoted to parents as being necessary for children’s learning and development. Schools and education systems make choices about which technology companies’ products to use. There is frequent hype about the ability of technology to revolutionise learning, but these claims are often unfounded.
Regulating the Children’s Internet. Children’s internet experiences are constructed and governed through numerous intersecting conventions, regulations, policies, legal standards and social norms. A key challenge for enhancing children’s internet experiences is striking a fair balance between government regulation, technology company policies, and personal responsibility.
Children and Families co-creating the Children’s Internet. Children are co-creators of the Children’s Internet through their participation with digital products, services, and content. By extension, parents, carers, and families also co-create the Children’s Internet as they share information and enable their children’s digital participation. Developing media literacy in an ongoing way is important for both children and families to succeed online.
Based on our investigation of these six elements, we have developed a set of principles to achieve a better Children’s Internet which we intend as a call for action for industry, governments, community leaders, decision- makers, educators, researchers, advocates, parents, and families.
... Følgende artikler har indgået i det eksplorative review:(Babic et al., 2017;Ballard et al., 2009;Beard et al., 2017;Brito, 2019;Cabanas-Sánchez et al., 2020;Cernikova et al., 2018;Domoff et al., 2019;Ellis et al., 2019;García-Hermoso et al., 2020;Hoyt et al., 2018;Hu et al., 2020;Jusienė et al., 2020;Khan & Burton, 2017;Kremer & Kremer, 2019;Liu et al., 2019;Matin et al., 2017;Mavoa et al., 2018;Minges et al., 2015;Orben, 2020;Orben & Przybylski, 2019;Peralta et al., 2018;Piotrowski et al., 2015;Przybylski & Weinstein, 2017Richdale & Schreck, 2019;Rodrigues et al., 2018;Sanders et al., 2016;Schreck et al., 2016;Sewall et al., 2020;Skalická et al., 2019;Suchert et al., 2015Suchert et al., , 2017Tansriratanawong et al., 2017;Wu et al., 2017).Mathias Nimgaard • Skaermtid, Displacement-hypotesen og digital determinisme ...
Digitale medier er en del af de fleste børns hverdagsliv, da de bruges af børnene selv eller andre omkring børnene hjemme, i skolen og i fritidslivet. Det øgede medieforbrug har gennem de seneste år vakt bekymring for, hvilken betydning digitaliseringen har for børns udvikling og trivsel. Særligt udbredt synes at have været bekymringen for, hvorvidt og hvornår tiden brugt på de digitale medier forskyder andre aktiviteter, der er vigtige for børns udvikling. Med et overvejende fokus på skærmtid antages forskellige digitale medier i dag ofte at være en kontekstløs variabel, der har samme kausale effekt på børns udvikling uafhængigt af mediets funktioner, barnets oplevelser eller den kollektive praksis. Denne artikel har til formål at nuancere disse monokausale udviklingslogikker ved at præsentere et sociokulturelt afsæt til at tilgå det gensidigt afhængige forhold mellem barn-medie-praksis. Mere uddybet vil jeg i artiklen dels kritisk diskutere skærmtidsparadigmets forskydningslogik som digital determinisme, og dels vil jeg udfolde et kontekstfokuseret analytisk afsæt gennem begreber om engagementer, vedvarende imitation og mediers affordances. Artiklens arbejde baserer sig på et eksplorativt review samt et kvalitativt empirisk projekt med børns brug af TikTok som empirisk nedslag. Artiklen behandler, hvordan børn i brugen af TikTok kan (re)producere betydninger på kollektive og personlige niveauer, og hvordan disse betydningsprocesser dynamisk kan virke ind i børns hverdagspraksisser. Nøgleord:TikTok, skærmtid, Displacement-hypotesen, udviklingspsykologi, digital determinisme
... The open world sandbox game Minecraft [34] occupies the first position on the Wikipedia video game best-seller list. This game is popular with players of all ages, although one study has asserted that, at least for boys, after the age of 11 interest dwindles [35]. Nevertheless, according to the statistics, it is the best-selling video game of all time with more than 238 million copies sold and up to 126 million active players in any given month. ...
The expansion of Open World Video Games (OWVGs) has seen the emergence of multiple new fictional worlds. This type of video game is characterized by total immersion in a world built for the players entertainment. What videogames developers want when players enter an OWVG is that they could feel like if they were open a door to an entirely new world and leave the real world behind. These virtual worlds manifest as a complement, an alternative, or the successor to the physical universe, and in some way continue the philosophical tradition of possible worlds begun by Leibniz. Accustomed to ‘surviving’ in hostile environments, millions of people continued to improve their skills in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic while locked in their homes. Once the pandemic seems to start to be left behind, the paper analyzes the virtual worlds created by the video games and the relations between the pandemic and these fictional worlds.
... A third strand focuses on analysing the play of children and young people as they use specific devices, games, services or sites. This strand involves studies on play with tablets and apps (Marsh et al., 2018), Virtual and Augmented Reality apps and games , smart toys (Mascheroni & Holloway, 2019), video games (Giddings, 2014) and virtual worlds (Marsh, 2010), including 'Minecraft' (Bailey, 2022;Dezuanni, 2020;Mavoa et al., 2018). An older body of work regards children's television-related play (e.g. ...
... Considering the game's influence on contemporary digital play, Minecraft has undoubtedly established a new level of using digital games for educational purposes [18]. The game's virtual environment and basic mechanics fulfil an important aspect of effective learning by connecting the game experience with the real world [19]. ...
Digital technology has shaped the way humans interact with information and create knowledge. These conditions have in turn shaped a generation of people who experienced virtual environments very early in their lives and are often referred to as digital natives. This group of people has a particular way of communicating and interacting. It characterizes their affinity spaces and the many experiences with virtual worlds and digital games. In digital games, the separation between entertainment and learning is becoming less pronounced. Many game titles have been used for educational purposes. An iconic example is Minecraft, which has been used formally in some schools to teach topics on the environment. However, studies on formal topics in Geography are conspicuously absent, and we therefore selected Minecraft to understand how digital natives learn about Geography given the character of its virtual environment. To this aim, we developed a learning task scenario for global climate zones. The scenario was tested in two pilot studies with two different groups of participants. The results indicate that participants already share some degree of knowledge about the game environment, despite differences within the digital native group. Using the results of the pilot studies, we discuss the design choices to engage players in the game's learning activity.
... At its heart, the game provides players with an open world in which they gather and use blocks to make experiences for themselves and others (Hjorth et al., 2020). Research shows that children love Minecraft because it enables them to be creative, to socialise with friends, and to learn new digital skills (Hjorth et al., 2020;Mavoa, Carter & Gibbs, 2017). It is not difficult to draw a line between the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of Minecraft's block construction techniques and another highly successful Nordic export -Lego. ...
... At its heart, the game provides players with an open world in which they gather and use blocks to make experiences for themselves and others (Hjorth et al., 2020). Research shows that children love Minecraft because it enables them to be creative, to socialise with friends, and to learn new digital skills (Hjorth et al., 2020;Mavoa, Carter & Gibbs, 2017). It is not difficult to draw a line between the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of Minecraft's block construction techniques and another highly successful Nordic export -Lego. ...
... While Kobolds initially had a -2 modifier to their strength scores and orcs had a -2 modifier to their intelligence, they have since been removed. While gaming culture alone is not the sole influence on women's unwelcoming experiences in gaming communities (Mavoa, Carter & Gibbs 2017), these modifiers are still a reflection of the sexism that was inherent in D&D. ...
This thesis seeks to investigate and challenge the conventional ways of playing an evil character in Tabletop Role-playing games (TRPGs) and Computer Role Playing Games (CRPGs). Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is one of the most well-known intellectual properties that is popular as both a TRPG and CRPG, and while there is ample research into these games, there is little understanding of what it means to play an 'evil' character, rather than a traditionally 'good' hero. This thesis aims to bridge this gap through an autoethnographic analysis of playing characters whose ethical and moral choices can be considered 'evil'. The thesis uses the systematisation of 'alignment' popularised by D&D to provide a framework for contextualising and analysing morality and ethics within role-playing game choices. Two case studies are examined, one that explores the challenges of playing an evil character in the fifth edition of the pen-and-paper tabletop game and a second exploring the dynamics of playing an evil character in the digital D&D game, Baldur's Gate 3. This thesis argues that playing an evil character on the tabletop and in the digital world is highly challenging. It contends that the intertwining of our personal moral and ethical codes with those of our characters makes playing an evil character difficult. The thesis provides a nuanced discussion on how evilness is facilitated or suppressed in the RPG through the alignment system. By understanding the division between player and character and the limited agency imparted by game designers and developers, evilness can be roleplayed productively.
... Ainda que bem documentada a eficiência de estratégias tradicionais (e.g. tarefas MTS em cadernos ou softwares), o uso de jogos como ferramentas de ensino tem sido defendido em razão do perfil dos aprendizes bastante familiarizados com esse tipo de tecnologia (Coutinho et al., 2016;Mavoa et al., 2018;Prensky, 2012). Há também argumentos favoráveis ao uso de jogos educativos, que mostram suas semelhanças com procedimentos de ensino fundamentados em Análise do Comportamento pela presença, por exemplo, de objetivos claros e mensuráveis, planejamento de consequências específicas para respostas, performance mensurável e passível de análise posterior, entre outros (Linehan et al., 2015(Linehan et al., , 2011. ...
Some difficulties faced by Brazilian students in Mathematics may reflect insufficient learning from the first years of schooling. Assessment instruments developed systematically and thoroughly can contribute to the mapping of basic repertoires. This work aimed to develop an educational game to assess pre-arithmetic behavior in children at the beginning of school education. Chapter 1 aimed to identify and operationally describe the predictors and indicators of success in arithmetic through a systematic literature review. We reviewed 13 studies - 11 longitudinal and two cross-sectional - and identified 31 predictors and 15 indicators of success. We observed large conceptual and operational dispersion, and it was not possible to identify a consensus on basic skills that are important for later learning in arithmetic. After reviewing developmental studies, we conducted a systematic literature review with an emphasis on behavior-analytic production. Chapter 2 aimed to identify the main characteristics of studies in Behavior Analysis that investigate pre-arithmetic repertoires and discuss the adequacy of the concept of pre-arithmetic skills. Twenty-one studies were included for analysis, divided between studies on numerical conceptual behavior and curriculum proposals that mainly cover relations between numerals and sets. We also discuss the adequacy of the concept of pre-arithmetic skills and propose that the set of studies identified be named "pre-arithmetic behavior". After revising the first two chapters, we operationalized an educational game's tasks to evaluate pre-arithmetic behaviors and collected validity evidence based on the content of Korsan: Pre-Arithmetic (Chapter 3). After grouping and applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, 74 objective-behaviors remained that were translated into game tasks. Semantic, usability, and engagement analysis were conducted with two participants (8 and 10 years old). Content analysis was also performed after consulting three experts. Subsequently, it was evaluated the alignment between proposed in-game tasks and Base Nacional Comum Curricular based on the analysis of four experts. In the experts' evaluation, the game content is considered appropriate for evaluating pre-arithmetic repertoires. We identified the need to change the visual and wording aspects of the instructions to fit the target audience best. In study 4, we collected evidence to refine the instrument by mainly applying the game to a younger target audience. Seven children, aged between 4 and 8 years old, participated in the study. As anticipated by experts in the challenge level analysis, we identified tasks of different difficulty levels, one of the components in the alignment assessment. Adjustments are suggested so that the game works as a suitable assessment tool while also fulfilling good games' engagement and fun goals.
... While Fornite is recommended for children 13 years and up (officially rated PEGI 12 in most of Europedue to frequent mild violence), for Jax and his friends (8-9 years old during the interviews), an affinity with, and intimate knowledge about this popular game provides them with high social capital (Abrams 2011;Carter et al. 2020;Dezuanni, Beavis, and O'Mara 2015). While Minecraft has been touted as one of the most popular games for children between 3 and 12 years, it decreases in popularly, particular with boys, after the age of 11 (Mavoa, Carter, and Gibbs 2018). Fortnite fans such as Jax, can draw on their expertise with Minecraft (at scavenging and building) to scaffold a more interesting play experience. ...
This article addresses a gap in research about primary school boys’ identification as ‘gamers.’ Drawing on a survey of 318 Year 3 (7–8 years old) students, the research identified boys’ self-reported enjoyment for gaming, their frequency using digital devices, and their self-rated digital skills. Interviews with four boys from the survey also explored the lifeworlds of self-professed ‘gamers.’ Findings point to the salience of games for many boys’ emerging identities and the inter-related nature of their experiences. We argue that teachers can capitalise on the strength of video games to create ‘in-group’ cultures and communities of practice in their classrooms to support learning.
... Y, de hecho, esos objetos son artefactos que median tanto la enseñanza como el aprendizaje (Hennig & Kirova, 2012). Con el uso de tecnologías digitales, niñas y niños tienen acceso a otros modos de jugar (Mavoa et al., 2017), pero persisten los mismos tres elementos. ...
Este artículo hace una revisión conceptual sobre el juego en la infancia y discute su función en ludotecas ubicadas en zonas de alta marginación social. El juego se ha asociado a la infancia: niñas y niños dedican mucho tiempo a esa actividad y son protagonistas ahí, y representa un lugar en el que mantienen simultáneamente dos
espacios de interacción, uno real y otro ficcional, donde están habilitados a transformar o adaptar la realidad a sus fines en relación a otros. Proveer de un lugar, tiempo, objetos, compañeros y
facilitadores de juegos, contribuye a crear espacios alternativos para que la niñez en situación de vulnerabilidad articule dimensiones de salud, derechos y convivencia.
... There are serious concerns about the gendering of game spaces, and Minecraft, despite its popularity across demographics, is unequal in its representations. Mavoa et al. (2018) found that girls are much less likely to play Minecraft until age nine, at which point the difference disappears, with a full reversal of the difference at age eleven (possibly due to boys moving on to other videogame titles). Their study showed boys are more likely to start playing Minecraft at a younger age and are more likely to play in the more competitive and challenging survival mode. ...
This chapter begins with a critical discussion of nascent playful and creative practices within contemporary media culture and reviews the scholarly literature across relevant disciplines (including game studies, media studies, education, visual culture and digital/haptic ethnography). The chapter then identifies diverse modalities of play, including core gameplay across devices and platforms, gamified learning, sandbox games, metagaming and paratextual community practices such as Twitch and LP. Finally, the chapter discusses how Minecraft is situated in these contexts in terms of its influence on creativity, sociality, and intergenerational and informal literacies.
... There are serious concerns about the gendering of game spaces, and Minecraft, despite its popularity across demographics, is unequal in its representations. Mavoa et al. (2018) found that girls are much less likely to play Minecraft until age nine, at which point the difference disappears, with a full reversal of the difference at age eleven (possibly due to boys moving on to other videogame titles). Their study showed boys are more likely to start playing Minecraft at a younger age and are more likely to play in the more competitive and challenging survival mode. ...
This chapter turns the focus to Understanding Play—that is, providing a more focused and detailed investigation of playful, creative, informal and incidental literacies—and identifies both the interdisciplinary and innovative methodological approaches that are used to analyse and interpret playful literacy practices. We suggest that Minecraft has become a locus for new interdisciplinary approaches, both methodological and conceptual, as well as a unique platform for the development of ethnographic innovation and qualitative research.
... There are serious concerns about the gendering of game spaces, and Minecraft, despite its popularity across demographics, is unequal in its representations. Mavoa et al. (2018) found that girls are much less likely to play Minecraft until age nine, at which point the difference disappears, with a full reversal of the difference at age eleven (possibly due to boys moving on to other videogame titles). Their study showed boys are more likely to start playing Minecraft at a younger age and are more likely to play in the more competitive and challenging survival mode. ...
“Minecraft is undoubtedly one of the most influential games of the past decade. Exploring Minecraft brilliantly situates this multiplatform and multisensory game within today’s pervasive play culture, focusing on its role in players’ everyday lives across domestic and educational spaces, and across cultural and generational contexts. In times of social distancing, Hjorth, Richardson, Davies, and Balmford make a compelling argument for the significance of social play and creativity in everyday life. An essential resource for gamers, educators, academics, and parents interested in the interconnections between games, education, domestic life, and creative practices.”
- Adriana de Souza e Silva, North Carolina State University, USA
This book directs critical attention to one of the most ubiquitous and yet under-analyzed games, Minecraft. Drawing on three years of ethnographic fieldwork into mobile games in Australian homes, the authors seek to take Minecraft seriously as a cultural practice. The book examines how Minecraft players engage in a form of gameplay that is uniquely intergenerational, creative, and playful, and which moves ambiently throughout everyday life. At the intersection of digital media, quotidian literacy, and ethnography, the book situates interdisciplinary debates around mundane play through the lens of Minecraft. Ultimately, Exploring Minecraft seeks to coalesce the discussion between formal and informal learning, revealing new forms of digital media creativity and ethnographic innovation around the analysis of games in everyday life.
Larissa Hjorth is Distinguished Professor and Director of the Design & Creative Practice Platform at RMIT University, Australia.
Ingrid Richardson is Professor in the School of Media & Communication at RMIT University, Australia.
Hugh Davies is a postdoctoral fellow in the Design & Creative Practice Platform at RMIT University, Australia.
William Balmford has a PhD in Media & Communication from RMIT University, Australia.
... In terms of who is learning with Minecraft EDU, we found that the teachers uploaded lessons mainly for students in the 8-10 and 11-13-year-old age groups. Relating back to work on youth use of Minecraft [14], this finding is expected. However, the high number of high school tags surprised us, given that prior research has not reported a lot of work with this age group. ...
Digital games have long been of interest to Game Studies communities , but relatively few have examined how teachers design with and incorporate commercial digital games in their teaching in K-12 classrooms. In this paper, we examine a corpus of 627 online lesson plans designed for Minecraft Education Edition. First, we provide descriptive statistics about the authors, language, subject areas, skills, and intended student age of the lessons. We then share our work-in-progress to analyze lessons uploaded by 16 power users. With this analysis, we hope to work towards a taxonomy of teachers' designs with sandbox games. Our work contributes a snapshot of the current landscape of uses of Minecraft Education Edition as an educational tool and begins exploring how teachers design with a sandbox game for learning.
... As I have detailed elsewhere, and drawing on ethnographic research (Dezuanni, 2018), players can choose to play the most straightforward "vanilla" version of the game in either "survival" or "creative" mode. In "survival" mode, players aim to avoid life-threatening challenges such as monsters and hunger and become immersed in developing new skills, finding ever more rare items, and using these to craft complex items and structures (see also Mavoa, Carter, & Gibbs, 2017). Players can choose to switch between survival and creative modes -for instance, to build structures such as housing and shelters in "creative" mode, and for a more adventurous gaming experience in "survival" mode. ...
... In the first twenty-first century settlers still say: e v i e w O n l y 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 F o r P e e r R e v i e w O n l y 6 has 'aroused the attention of teachers and researchers alike' (Nebel, Schneider, & Rey 2016, 1;cf. Beavis, et al. 2015;Mavoa, Carter & Gibbs 2017). Minecraft's expansion in and through schooling is associated with discourses of 'connected learning', which are directly linked to 'academic achievement' and 'career success' (Ito, et al. 2013, 42). ...
The myth that justified the takeover of a continent lives on both in classrooms and popular media. Drawing from classroom observations in an urban primary school in Australia, this paper enters the technology in education conversation, more specifically through the use of videogames for learning. Based on classroom exchanges between teachers and students, we interrogate how the school’s use of Minecraft, a best-selling
commercial videogame, continues to reproduce myths of settler colonialism in the 21st century. Specifically, the curriculum mobilizes structures inherent to both Minecraft and modern Australia’s treatment of its Indigenous populations. That is, both classroom and videogame interactions reproduced the myth of terra nullius: the doctrine that determined land, prior to colonization, was empty and unowned, and therefore available for settlement by the colonizer. We conclude that within videogames and classrooms, students’ voices manage to interrogate the curriculum, resisting the reproduction of erasive coloniality in school.
... Consequently, in this paper, we take a more accurate approach to examine how gender and group learning conditions (in this case collaboration and cooperation) affect attitudes and achievements in a virtual social game. The game at the center of our study, Minecraft, successfully defines the sandbox genre and has gained wide acceptance among children recently, especially for its promising social aspect (Mavoa, Carter, & Gibbs, 2017). Additionally, like other sandbox games, the core gameplay mechanics in Minecraft is to allow players to create their purpose of the game and to construct new elements in the virtual environment such as reenactments of real-world buildings. ...
This article reports an empirical study that explores gender differences in both cooperative and collaborative social gaming in relation to achievements and attitudes. Another aim was to compare students’ game attitudes, feelings toward group work, and achievements in cooperative versus collaborative digital game-based learning environments. One hundred sixty-four, sixth-grade students from five different classrooms at an elementary school in South Korea participated voluntarily in this study. A total of 2 boys and 2 girls were randomly assigned to each group, resulting in 20 groups for each of the grouping conditions. Based on interaction effects, results suggest that male students show more positive game attitudes in collaborative conditions, whereas female students show more positive game attitudes in cooperative conditions. Data also suggest that males show more positive feelings toward group work than females, irrespective of grouping conditions. Regarding academic and gaming achievements, female students showed higher academic achievement in collaborative conditions, while male students scored higher on academic achievement under cooperative conditions. Findings from this study indicate that gender-balanced groups show significantly higher gaming achievement in collaboration compared with cooperation. Results are interpreted with reference to future research and classroom practices.
This study aims to reveal the impact of using the digital game Minecraft: Education Edition in teaching geographical features in social studies on the achievement and spatial perception skills of 5th grade students. The research adopts a sequential explanatory mixed-method design. Quantitative data was collected using self-assessment and teacher assessment forms on spatial perception skills, and an achievement test developed by the researchers. Qualitative data was gathered through interviews. The study found that using Minecraft led to an increase in students' achievement and their skills in examining space. This study provides valuable insights for educators and curriculum developers, offering a potential pathway to enhance students' understanding of geographical concepts and spatial perception skills through interactive digital tools such as Minecraft: Education Edition in the future.
Bu araştırma okul öncesi dönem çocuklarının sosyal duygusal iyi oluş ve psikolojik sağlamlıkları ile dijital oyun bağımlılık eğilimleri arasındaki ilişkiyi belirlemek amacıyla yürütülmüştür. Çalışma ilişkisel tarama modelinde tasarlanmıştır. Araştırmanın çalışma grubu X ilindeki okul öncesi eğitim kurumlarına devam eden 324 çocuktan oluşmaktadır. Araştırmada veri toplama aracı olarak “Okul Öncesi Çocuklar İçin Sosyal Duygusal İyi Oluş ve Psikolojik Sağlamlık Ölçeği” ve “Dijital Oyun Bağımlılık Eğilimi Ölçeği” kullanılmıştır. Araştırmanın sonucunda çocukların sosyal duygusal iyi oluş ve psikolojik sağlamlık düzeylerinin yüksek olduğu, dijital oyun bağımlılık eğilimlerinin ise orta düzeyde olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Çocukların sosyal duygusal iyi oluş ve psikolojik sağlamlıkları ile dijital oyun bağımlılık eğilimleri arasında orta düzeyde, negatif yönlü ve anlamlı bir ilişki olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Buna göre çocukların sosyal duygusal iyi oluş ve psikolojik sağlamlıkları arttıkça dijital oyun bağımlılık eğilimleri azalmaktadır. Çocukların sosyal duygusal iyi oluş ve psikolojik sağlamlıkları ile dijital oyun bağımlılık eğilimlerinin cinsiyet ve günlük ekran süresi değişkenlerine göre farklılaştığı ancak yaş değişkenine göre farklılaşmadığı tespit edilmiştir
Coastal cities are confronted with the imperative to adapt to the impacts of climate change. Within the realm of adaptation strategies, ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) has emerged as a prominent solution for enhancing the resilience of coastal communities. However, a significant obstacle lies in the effective dissemination and comprehension of these innovative climate adaptation strategies among local populations. Communication serves as a pivotal factor in facilitating an understanding of the multifaceted challenges posed by climate change. The engagement of children in communication initiatives has proven to be effective when promoting adoption of these types of solutions, as they also support the engagement of other local societal groups, such as their families. Minecraft, a highly popular digital game, presents a compelling platform for the creation of public online servers featuring customisable mechanics. Leveraging this potential, our study introduces EbAcraft, a game specifically developed to engross and challenge players in the collaborative implementation of EbAs tailored for a fictional coastal city. By contextualising the climate change challenges, presenting potential solutions, and inviting participation within a virtual environment, EbAcraft was conceived as an engaging tool to foster comprehension and encourage active involvement. The game was launched during the EU Green Week 2023 as an online workshop, inviting participants from 10 different European cities as part of the SCORE Project and supporting multilingual accessibility with translations available in 11 languages. SCORE Coastal Cities Living Labs (CCLLs) promoted the event within their respective communities through schools and social media, resulting in the participation of 33 players over 7 hours of online event.
Thus far, the book has argued that children’s media can contribute to the building of environmental literacy, particularly by strengthening young viewers’ knowledge and sense of efficacy in the face of environmental problems. My concern in this chapter is with another aspect of environmental literacy: the qualities or mindsets that allow humans to feel empathy with the non-human world. Here, I take up the question of whether mediated experiences with nature can contribute to the development of environmental sensitivity and nature-connectedness. I bring this conundrum into my discussion of animated and digital representations of nature across children’s screen media. Through my analysis of the films Wolfwalkers and How to Train Your Dragon, along with the popular videogame Minecraft, I propose that the animated, digital, and virtual experiences that constitute so much of children’s screen time today open a space for radical reconfigurations of the human/nature relationship. My concern here is particularly with the capacity for screen texts to encourage environmental empathy through representations of nature and/or the relationship between human and non-human worlds, bodies, and ways of being.
Purpose
Play is a powerful influence on children's learning and parents can provide opportunities to learn specific content by scaffolding children's play. Parent-child synchrony (i.e., harmony, reciprocity and responsiveness in interactions) is a component of parent-child interactions that is not well characterized in studies of play.
Procedures
We tested whether children's executive function relates to mother-child synchrony during physical and digital play in sixty mother-child dyads.
Main findings
Mother-child synchrony did not relate to children's executive function or differ by play type (physical, digital), though during digital play mother-child synchrony was higher for girls relative to boys.
Conclusions
The findings suggest that mother-child synchrony is not influenced by children's executive function and physical and digital play can be similarly beneficial in offering the opportunity for responsive, reciprocal, dynamic interactions. The sex difference suggests that further factors should be explored as influences of play synchrony
Studying digitally mediated play presents challenges in terms of how to view and record both the on-screen action and player’s bodies in physical space. Carrying out this research in a socially and technologically diverse range of family households poses further challenges, common to ethnographic media research in general. In this paper, we describe a method for generating richly detailed views of 6–8 year old children’s digital play with the game Minecraft, on a range of devices and in a range of household configurations. We explain the process undertaken in our own research, highlighting the need for flexibility and a collaborative approach between participants and researchers. We argue that collecting multi-perspectival recordings of digital play provides data that has the potential to greatly aid understanding of digital playworlds.
The climate crisis has inspired youth-led activism across the world and young people now lead global campaigns and political protest on climate justice. However, aside from news media coverage of youth activism and the attendant focus on young people’s hand-drawn protest placards, relatively little is known about young people’s views on the actions needed to respond to the climate crisis or how they imagine environmentally-sustainable futures. This visual essay addresses that lacuna by exploring young people’s ideas about local climate actions. The images selected for consideration were created using Minecraft, the 3D block-building visualisation game, at workshops held in Ireland. Young people and their families were invited to create environmentally-sustainable futures at Minecraft workshops.
Exploring these 3D designs as images, the essay documents young people’s visual representations of desirable climate actions and reflects on these Minecraft images to shed light on how young people envision alternative climate futures. These collective visions, or climate imaginaries, are powerful indicators of what young people imagine is possible in the future. In doing so, they present an alternative to the mainstream news and entertainment media preoccupation with dystopian constructions of the climate crisis. They also highlight the power of Minecraft as a visual medium to open up new ways of seeing nature and of envisioning nature-society relations.
The selected images were also exhibited as part of the CLIMATE Look Lab 2022 held at the Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool. The gallery invited researchers, community groups and artists to use the gallery as a lab space to engage visitors with our changing environment and to explore how images can change the visual narrative on climate change.
As individuals spend more time with mobile devices, concerns over screen time have grown, and thus so have efforts to reduce it. Even with mixed evidence for screen time's negative effects, mindfulness about mobile phone use has emerged as a coping mechanism and intervention strategy. This study uses an online survey (N = 405) to investigate whether general mindfulness and perceptions of one's phone use predict the use of Apple's Screen Time feature to track mobile screen time. Based on the Technology Acceptance Model, results indicate that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use predict positive attitudes toward the feature, intention to use it, and actual use of it. However, mindfulness is a negative predictor of usefulness, indicating that those who are already more mindful find this feature less useful. Perceived time spent on one's phone was not related to perceived usefulness and thus did not predict use of the feature in the overall model. These results provide theoretical implications for the role of mindfulness in communication technology use, for predicting the adoption of screen time tracking tools, and practical implications for how to design these features for users based on their perceptions of their screen time and of screen time tracking.
The first case of a novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was diagnosed in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 and the outbreak was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March 2020. By the end of March 2020, 136 countries had positive COVID-19 cases. Meanwhile, in response to the virus, countries instigated various forms of ‘lock-downs’ and social distancing measures. Globally, children and adolescents could not meet and play or hang out with their friends as they did pre-pandemic. These changes essentially drove children (4–18 years) indoors for their play and recreation needs, instigating significant changes in the lives and day-to-day routines of children almost simultaneously in and across national borders. To understand the impact of these changes to children's play worlds and friendship groups, an online questionnaire was developed for children and parents and rolled out in Ireland, Italy, the United States, and England during the summer of 2020 following ethical approvals. The questionnaire consisted of qualitative (open ended) and quantitative (closed) questions and this paper focuses on the changes to children's (4–18 years) indoor play. We found that the various ‘lock-downs’ and social distancing measures created largely similar impacts on play behaviors and activities in each developed country, irrespective of culture, the globally did indeed become ‘local’. Moreover, playing in ‘safe settings’ such as the home environment, may have helped to build resilience and to enhance protective factors in children's lives as opposed to a demonstration of global homogeneity [merriam-webster.com]. The impact of ‘lock-downs’ may counter-intuitively have reduced opportunities for cooperative play and parents' mediation of play due to increased parental responsibilities (working from home, home schooling) which reduced the time available to spend with children in non-school activities, including play.
Purpose
This study aims to understand the influence of cartoon characters on the generation alpha (GA) in purchase decision-making, supported by the theory of planned behaviour.
Design/methodology/approach
Quantitative study was used to collect data from 294 Indian parents on behalf of their children (between 8 and 12 years) using convenience sampling and 20 items Likert scale questionnaire. Partial least squares-structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data and for hypothesis testing.
Findings
The study shows the favourable impact of cartoon characters to influence the behaviour of GA while making the final purchase decision. The likability was found to be significantly related to the recall, willingness to try/buy. The recall was significantly related to willingness to try/buy and purchase intention. Willingness to try/but was significantly related to purchase intention, but it has no significant relation with the final purchase decision, whereas purchase intention had significant relation with the final purchase decision.
Practical implications
The study indicates that generating likability for cartoon characters among GA is important. Managers should recognize that although parents make the final purchase decision, however, children play an influential role. Advertisers should plan their communication accordingly. An emotional connection with cartoons can influence GA, which further impacts recall, willingness to try/buy, purchase intention and decision.
Originality/value
Various studies have been conducted in western countries, but very few studies have been conducted in emerging markets like India, highlighting cartoon characters’ influence on GA’s purchase decision-making, with theoretical underpinnings. The study also explores the importance of GA, an emerging consumer market in today’s digitalized era, which is highly influenced by technological gadgets. It becomes challenging for marketers to promote their products on television to influence GA purchase behaviour.
In this chapter, we explore the creative metagaming and paratextual play practices that surround Minecraft, apprehending the many ways that the game encourages and enables sociality and informal literacies beyond the core gameplay. The terms metagaming and paratextuality describe the way players engage outside the boundaries of the primary game, understand the ‘ways to play the game’, challenge the limits of the game environment, and create user-generated content through game and fan blogs, cosplay events, and via various modes of watching and sharing gameplay and game-related content. These activities are forms of vernacular or everyday creativity, and integral to the formation of game communities and emergent informal literacies. Through insights gained from our ethnographic research, we will discuss the way players engage with Minecraft through Twitch, YouTube and LP, alongside the numerous face-to-face and networked activities that take place outside the core gameplay.
Aims: To gain practice-based insights, we evaluated outcomes from a science-themed Minecraft Club for children with Special Educational Needs over a four-year period. Science topics were introduced, followed by themed building in Minecraft in a multi-player setting. Particular focus was placed on the benefits of playing a shared-interest game in a social and educational context.
Methods: Mixed-methods interviews and surveys were used to gather feedback from children attending the club and their accompanying caregivers. Inferential statistics assessed the influence of individual differences and club attendance time on responses. Findings: Children consistently enjoyed attending the club and most felt that they had developed their scientific knowledge. Social-communication skills and confidence were also positively impacted, as reported by both children and caregivers. The accepting and inclusive nature of the club was of high value.
Limitations: Sample sizes and data collection methods were necessarily restricted and mainly qualitative due to the purpose of the club and the nature of the attending cohort. However, valuable insights were gained from respondents.
Conclusions: Both children and caregivers communicated that Minecraft Club succeeds in providing a context through which children can develop social and communication skills, build confidence, make new friends, and learn about science. These insights have important implications concerning the potential social and educational benefits of Minecraft for children with Special Educational Needs, and the value of extra-curricular clubs that provide safe and supportive spaces for children to thrive.
Playing digital games is increasingly pathologized as an addiction or a disorder, but there is limited research into the impact of game addiction discourse on children who play digital games. In this article, we present results from a study into the digital play of twenty-four 9–14-year-olds, attending to our participants’ perspectives and attitudes towards ‘game addiction’ and how it interacts with their play and identity. Focused primarily on the online multiplayer first-person shooter game Fortnite, we examine how children encounter and attempt to negotiate game addiction discourse and demonstrate how the discourse in and of itself produces challenges for young people whose interests and passions revolve around games. This article subsequently discusses how the discursive frameworks that are perpetuated in the media around ‘problematic play’ need to incorporate and be inclusive of the child’s right to play, and the relevance of our findings to the study of media panic and children’s critical media literacies.
Online multiplayer games like Minecraft, gaining increasing popularity among present-day youth, include rich contexts for social interactions but are also rife with interpersonal conflict among players. Research shows that a variety of socio-technical mechanisms (e.g., server rules, chat filters, use of in-game controls to ban players, etc.) aim to limit and/or eliminate social conflict in games like Minecraft. However, avoiding social conflict need not necessarily always be a useful approach. Broadly defined in CSCW literature as a phenomenon that may arise even amidst mutual cooperation, social conflict can yield positive outcomes depending on how it is managed (e.g., [Easterbrook et al.,1993]). In fact, the aforementioned approaches to avoid conflict may not be helpful as they do not help youth understand how to address similar interpersonal differences that may occur in other social settings. Furthermore, prior research has established the value of developing conflict-resolution skills during early adolescence within safe settings, such as school/after-school wellness and prevention interventions (e.g.,[Shure, 1982], [Aber et al., 1998]), for later success in any given interpersonal relationship. While games like Minecraft offer authentic contexts for encountering social conflict, little work thus far has explored how to help youth develop conflict-resolution skills by design interventions within online interest-driven settings. Drawing from prior literature in CSCW, youth wellness and prevention programs, we translated offline evidence-based strategies into the design of an online, after-school program that was run within a moderated Minecraft server. The online program, titled Survival Lab, was designed to promote problem-solving and conflict-resolution skills in youth (ages 8-14 years). We conducted a field study for six months (30 youth participants, four college-age moderators, and one high-school volunteer aged 15 years) using in-game observations and digital trace ethnographic approaches. Our study data reveals that participating youth created community norms and developed insightful solutions to conflicts in Survival Lab. Our research offers three key takeaways. Firstly, online social games like Minecraft lend themselves as feasible settings for the translation of offline evidence-based design strategies in promoting the development of conflict-resolution and other social competencies among youth. Secondly, the design features that support structured and unstructured play while enabling freedom of choice for youth to engage as teams and/or individuals are viable for collective or community-level outcomes. Third and finally, moderators, as caring adults and near-peer mentors, play a vital role in facilitating the development of conflict-resolution skills and interest-driven learning among youth. We discuss the implications of our research for translating offline design to online play-based settings as sites and conclude with recommendations for future work.
This article argues that Minecraft played on mobile devices in Australian homes impacts the spaces and perceptions of play within those familial settings. Based on findings from the Games of Mobile Australian Research Council Project, we present examples of how mobile devices bring about particular scenarios of Minecraft play within the household and family dynamics. These scenarios include renegotiating household spaces through acts of mobile Minecraft play, the development of physical gesture rituals through mobile touchscreen interactions, and the complex negotiations involved in shared device usage between different family members. We make the case that through these familial scenarios, the space of Minecraft can become an extension of the family home. These findings offer new insights into mobile-device-based engagement with Minecraft and provide a solid base of information for academic researchers and social policymakers seeking to understand the Minecraft and mobile phenomena. As mobile technology grows in ubiquity, mobile Minecraft becomes increasingly embedded in acts of play. We propose that Minecraft on mobile devices reshapes Australian perceptions of play, creativity, and family dynamics.
Since the field of educational videogames or serious games is not limited to games that are specifically designed for educational purposes, videogames such as Minecraft have aroused the attention of teachers and researchers alike. To gain insights into the applicability of Minecraft, we reviewed the literature on use of the game in education and experimental research. We summarized the current usage in addition to our own considerable experience with Minecraft in courses on educational videogame design and as a research instrument in instructional psychology and discuss the benefits and limitations. Based on these observations, we outlined the future of Minecraft in both fields and emphasize examples that already stretch the technical and methodical boundaries. To increase the application of our analysis, we distill three main implications from our observations that address the future of educational and research tools in educational videogames in general.
This chapter describes an exploratory case study observing one instructor as he used the video game environment, Minecraft in a high school English literature class. In our analysis of the study, we establish Minecraft as a learning tool that is a descendant of Piaget and Inhelder’s (1969) constructivist theories and Papert’s (1980) translation of those theories into the classroom (i.e., constructionism). Scholars have long seen the connection between constructionism, critical thinking, and digital environments. Minecraft is yet another accessible tool, but it implicates a style of learning that is still out of sync with most K-12 technological practices and the culture of the school environment itself. We discuss our observations in the context of the traditional educational culture and practices to suggest that full implementation of tools like Minecraft will require a shift in the way video game technologies are perceived and used for instruction.
Despite the growing number of very young children who go online and who are using a wide range of technologies, little is known about children’s interactions with those technologies. This report presents a pilot qualitative study designed and implemented in collaboration with a selected group of academic partners in different European countries that aims at pioneering in Europe the exploration of young children and their families` experiences with new technologies. It presents its results and discuss the findings at cross-national level on how children between zero and eight engage with digital technologies such as smartphones, tablets, computers and games; how far parents mediate this engagement and their awareness on the risks-opportunities balance. The report concludes on recommendations to parents, industries and policymakers.
Media, from television to the "new media" (including cell phones, iPads, and social media), are a dominant force in children's lives. Although television is still the predominant medium for children and adolescents, new technologies are increasingly popular. The American Academy of Pediatrics continues to be concerned by evidence about the potential harmful effects of media messages and images; however, important positive and prosocial effects of media use should also be recognized. Pediatricians are encouraged to take a media history and ask 2 media questions at every well-child visit: How much recreational screen time does your child or teenager consume daily? Is there a television set or Internet-connected device in the child's bedroom? Parents are encouraged to establish a family home use plan for all media. Media influences on children and teenagers should be recognized by schools, policymakers, product advertisers, and entertainment producers. Pediatrics 2013;132:958-961.
This article investigates 8- and 9-year-old girls’ use of the popular game Minecraft at home and school, particularly the ways in which they performatively ‘bring themselves into being’ through talk and digital production in the social spaces of the classroom and within the game’s multiplayer online world. We explore how the girls undertake practices of curatorship to display their Minecraft knowledge through discussion of the game, both ‘in world’ and in face-to-face interactions, and as they assemble resources within and around the game to design, build and display their creations and share stories about their gameplay.
Electronic gaming contexts are now a dominant entertainment medium for young people in the developed and developing world (Lenhart et al., 2008), yet little is known about how distinct doses of gaming exposure may influence adolescents. This research focused on the effects of quantity of play, the amount of time devoted to gaming on a typical day, and quality of play, the kinds of games regularly played, as predictors on teachers’ evaluations of young peoples’ academic engagement and psychosocial functioning. Results derived from a school-based sample of 217 young people indicated that, compared with those who did not play, adolescents who engaged in low levels of gaming,<1 hr a day, evidenced lower levels of hyperactivity and conduct issues whereas the opposite was found for those who gamed for >3 hr a day. Further, the teachers of young people who tended toward playing mainly single-player games reported that these students showed lower levels of hyperactivity and conduct problems, fewer peer and emotional difficulties, as well as higher levels of active academic engagement. Teachers of young people who played cooperative and competitive online games rated these students as more emotionally stable and had better relationships with classmates, a pattern of results that remained in evidence controlling for variance linked to participant sex. Results are discussed in light of a developing and increasingly nuanced literature focused on determining the ways and the extent to which electronic gaming may influence young people. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)
Children use electronic screens at ever younger ages, but there is still little empirical research on how and why parents mediate this media use. In line with Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, we explored whether children’s media skills and media activities, next to parents’ attitudes about media for children, and several child and parent-family characteristics, predicted parental mediation practices. Furthermore, we investigated children’s use and ownership of electronic screens in the bedroom in relationship to the child’s media skills. Data from an online survey among 896 Dutch parents with young children (0-7 years) showed that children’s use and ownership of TV, game consoles, computers and touchscreens, primarily depended on their media skills and age, not on parent’s attitudes about media for children. Only touchscreens were used more often by children, when parents perceived media as helpful in providing moments of rest for the child. In line with former studies, parents consistently applied co-use, supervision, active mediation, restrictive mediation, and monitoring, depending on positive and negative attitudes about media. The child’s media skills and media activities, however, had stronger relationships with parental mediation styles, whereas age was not related. Canonical discriminant analysis, finally, captured how the five mediation strategies varied among infants, toddlers, pre-schoolers, and early childhood children, predominantly as a result of children’s media skills, and media activities, i.e., playing educational games and passive entertainment use.
Paediatric recommendations to limit children's and adolescents' screen based media use (SBMU) to less than two hours per day appear to have gone unheeded. Given the associated adverse physical and mental health outcomes of SBMU it is understandable that concern is growing worldwide. However, because the majority of studies measuring SBMU have focused on TV viewing, computer use, video game playing, or a combination of these the true extent of total SBMU (including non-sedentary hand held devices) and time spent on specific screen activities remains relatively unknown. This study assesses the amount of time Australian children and adolescents spend on all types of screens and specific screen activities.
We administered an online instrument specifically developed to gather data on all types of SBMU and SBMU activities to 2,620 (1373 males and 1247 females) 8 to 16 year olds from 25 Australian government and non-government primary and secondary schools.
We found that 45% of 8 year olds to 80% of 16 year olds exceeded the recommended < 2 hours per day for SBMU. A series of hierarchical linear models demonstrated different relationships between the degree to which total SBMU and SBMU on specific activities (TV viewing, Gaming, Social Networking, and Web Use) exceeded the < 2 hours recommendation in relation to sex and age.
Current paediatric recommendations pertaining to SBMU may no longer be tenable because screen based media are central in the everyday lives of children and adolescents. In any reappraisal of SBMU exposure times, researchers, educators and health professionals need to take cognizance of the extent to which SBMU differs across specific screen activity, sex, and age.
There is considerable enthusiasm in many quarters for the incorporation of digital games into the classroom, and the capacity of games to engage and challenge players, present complex representations and experiences, foster collaborative learning, and promote deep learning. But while there is increasing research documenting the progress and outcomes of game-based learning, relatively little attention is paid to student perceptions and voice. In order to effectively target game-based learning pedagogy, it is important to understand students' previous experience, if any, of the use of games in the classroom, and what they made of these. In this paper, we present findings from a survey of 270 primary and secondary school students in Year Levels 4–9 (aged 9–14) in 6 Queensland schools at the start of a 3-year Australian Research Council project researching the use of digital games in school to promote literacy and learning.
Screen-based media (SBM) occupy a considerable portion of young peoples' discretionary leisure time. The aim of this paper was to investigate whether distinct clusters of SBM use exist, and if so, to examine the relationship of any identified clusters with other activity/sedentary behaviours and physical and mental health indicators.
The data for this study come from 643 adolescents, aged 14 years, who were participating in the longitudinal Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study through May 2003 to June 2006. Time spent on SBM, phone use and reading was assessed using the Multimedia Activity Recall for Children and Adults. Height, weight, muscle strength were measured at a clinic visit and the adolescents also completed questionnaires on their physical activity and psychosocial health. Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to analyse groupings of screen-based media use.
Three clusters of SBM use were found; C1 'instrumental computer users' (high email use, general computer use), C2 'multi-modal e-gamers' (both high console and computer game use) and C3 'computer e-gamers' (high computer game use only). Television viewing was moderately high amongst all the clusters. C2 males took fewer steps than their male peers in C1 and C3 (-13,787/week, 95%CI: -4619 to -22957, p = 0.003 and -14,806, 95%CI: -5,306 to -24,305, p = 0.002) and recorded less MVPA than the C1 males (-3.5 h, 95%CI: -1.0 to -5.9, p = 0.005). There was no difference in activity levels between females in clusters C1 and C3.
SBM use by adolescents did cluster and these clusters related differently to activity/sedentary behaviours and both physical and psychosocial health indicators. It is clear that SBM use is not a single construct and future research needs to take consideration of this if it intends to understand the impact SBM has on health.
Video games are a ubiquitous part of almost all children's and adolescents' lives, with 97% playing for at least one hour per day in the United States. The vast majority of research by psychologists on the effects of "gaming" has been on its negative impact: the potential harm related to violence, addiction, and depression. We recognize the value of that research; however, we argue that a more balanced perspective is needed, one that considers not only the possible negative effects but also the benefits of playing these games. Considering these potential benefits is important, in part, because the nature of these games has changed dramatically in the last decade, becoming increasingly complex, diverse, realistic, and social in nature. A small but significant body of research has begun to emerge, mostly in the last five years, documenting these benefits. In this article, we summarize the research on the positive effects of playing video games, focusing on four main domains: cognitive, motivational, emotional, and social. By integrating insights from developmental, positive, and social psychology, as well as media psychology, we propose some candidate mechanisms by which playing video games may foster real-world psychosocial benefits. Our aim is to provide strong enough evidence and a theoretical rationale to inspire new programs of research on the largely unexplored mental health benefits of gaming. Finally, we end with a call to intervention researchers and practitioners to test the positive uses of video games, and we suggest several promising directions for doing so. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
This study analyzed nationally representative survey data of teenagers and parents in the USA to investigate parental mediation of teenagers’ video game playing and its influence on various types of teenagers’ gaming behaviors. Three forms of parental mediation of video game playing were examined: co-playing, game rating checking, and stopping children from playing games. A weak and negative correlation was found between teenagers’ age and parental mediation. Also, parents who presumed negative influence of video games were more likely to restrict video game playing of their teenage children. Parental mediation — particularly game rating checking — was found to be significantly related to teenagers’ game playing frequency and engagement in deceptive gaming behaviors.
To estimate the prevalence of physical activity and sedentary behaviours in European children, and to evaluate the relationship between media availability in personal space and physical activity in relation to total screen time.
Data from the baseline IDEFICS (Identification and prevention of dietary- and lifestyle-induced health effects in children and infants) cross-sectional survey. Information on hours of television/digital video disk/video viewing and computer/games-console use (weekday and weekend days), media device availability in personal space, sports club membership, hours of active organized play and commuting (to and from school) were assessed via a self-reported parental questionnaire. Total screen time was defined as the sum of daily media use and subsequently dichotomized into meeting or not meeting the guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Eight survey centres (Italy, Estonia, Cyprus, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Hungary and Spain).
Children (n 15 330; 51 % males) aged 2-10 years.
Percentage of children engaged in total screen time for >2 h/d was higher on weekend days (52 % v. 20 % on weekdays) and in the older group (71 % in males; 57 % in females), varying by country. Children with a television set in their bedroom were more likely not to meet the screen time recommendations (OR = 1·54; 95 % CI 1·60, 1·74).
Approximately a third of the children failed to meet current screen time recommendations. Availability of a television set in personal space increased the risk of excess total screen time. This information could be used to identify potential targets for public health promotion actions of young population groups.
The term 'metagaming' is widely used to describe a variety of conceptually difficult activities associated with game play. This wide use has lead to a conceptual overload of the term, mitigating its potential use for game studies. This paper will suggest two new terms to use, 'orthogame and 'paragame', in conjunction with a more clearly defined notion of 'metagame'. We argue that these new terms have the potential to be highly useful for defining and understanding peripheral play activities common in modern digital games. We apply this new vocabulary to a variety of play practices in EVE Online to illustrate its strength for analysing and defining play practices.
Virtual worlds for children are becoming increasingly popular, and yet there are few accounts of children’s use of these worlds. Young children are spending increasing amounts of time online as technology continues to create significant changes in social and cultural practices in the 21st century. Some of children's online interactions can be categorized as playful in nature; however, play and technology are frequently positioned as oppositional. In this article, I explore the tensions surrounding the relationship between play and technology and relate it to similar discourses concerning the concepts of ‘real’ and ‘virtual’. I then move on to consider the growing popularity of virtual worlds with young children and examine the way in which the worlds have been marketed to children and parents/carers on the basis of their propensity to offer online play in a safe environment. The article provides an overview of two virtual worlds currently targeted at young children and draws on a survey of primary children’s use of virtual worlds in order to identify the nature of play in these environments. One hundred and seventy-five children aged 5—11 completed an online survey and 15 took part in group interviews in which their use of virtual worlds was explored. This article focuses on the data relating to 17 children aged from five to seven years who used virtual worlds. Findings indicate that virtual worlds offered these young children a wide range of opportunities for play and that the types of play in which they engaged relate closely to ‘offline’ play. The implications for early years educators are considered.
Ten years after the groundbreaking From Barbie to Mortal Kombat highlighted the ways gender stereotyping and related social and economic issues permeate digital game play, the number of women and girl gamers has risen considerably. Despite this, gender disparities remain in gaming. Women may be warriors in World of Warcraft, but they are also scantily clad "booth babes" whose sex appeal is used to promote games at trade shows. Player-generated content has revolutionized gaming, but few games marketed to girls allow "modding" (game modifications made by players). Gender equity, the contributors to Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat argue, requires more than increasing the overall numbers of female players. Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat brings together new media theorists, game designers, educators, psychologists, and industry professionals, including some of the contributors to the earlier volume, to look at how gender intersects with the broader contexts of digital games today: gaming, game industry and design, and serious games. The contributors discuss the rise of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) and the experience of girl and women players in gaming communities; the still male-dominated gaming industry and the need for different perspectives in game design; and gender concerns related to emerging serious games (games meant not only to entertain but also to educate, persuade, or change behavior). In today's game-packed digital landscape, there is an even greater need for games that offer motivating, challenging, and enriching contexts for play to a more diverse population of players. Contributors: Cornelia Brunner, Shannon Campe, Justine Cassell, Mia Consalvo, Jill Denner, Mary Flanagan, Janine Fron, Tracy Fullerton, Elisabeth Hayes, Carrie Heeter, Kristin Hughes, Mizuko Ito, Henry Jenkins, Yasmin B. Kafai, Caitlin Kelleher, Brenda Laurel, Nicole Lazzaro, Holin Lin, Jacki Morie, Helen Nissenbaum, Celia Pearce, Caroline Pelletier, Jennifer Y. Sun, T. L. Taylor, Brian Winn, Nick Yee. Interviews with: Nichol Bradford, Brenda Braithwaite, Megan Gaiser, Sheri Graner Ray, Morgan Romine.
Girls and women as game players and game designers in the new digital landscape of massively multiplayer online games, “second lives,” “modding,” serious games, and casual games.
Ten years after the groundbreaking From Barbie to Mortal Kombat highlighted the ways gender stereotyping and related social and economic issues permeate digital game play, the number of women and girl gamers has risen considerably. Despite this, gender disparities remain in gaming. Women may be warriors in World of Warcraft, but they are also scantily clad “booth babes” whose sex appeal is used to promote games at trade shows. Player-generated content has revolutionized gaming, but few games marketed to girls allow “modding” (game modifications made by players). Gender equity, the contributors to Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat argue, requires more than increasing the overall numbers of female players. Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat brings together new media theorists, game designers, educators, psychologists, and industry professionals, including some of the contributors to the earlier volume, to look at how gender intersects with the broader contexts of digital games today: gaming, game industry and design, and serious games. The contributors discuss the rise of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) and the experience of girl and women players in gaming communities; the still male-dominated gaming industry and the need for different perspectives in game design; and gender concerns related to emerging serious games (games meant not only to entertain but also to educate, persuade, or change behavior). In today's game-packed digital landscape, there is an even greater need for games that offer motivating, challenging, and enriching contexts for play to a more diverse population of players.
ContributorsCornelia Brunner, Shannon Campe, Justine Cassell, Mia Consalvo, Jill Denner, Mary Flanagan, Janine Fron, Tracy Fullerton, Elisabeth Hayes, Carrie Heeter, Kristin Hughes, Mimi Ito, Henry Jenkins III, Yasmin B. Kafai, Caitlin Kelleher, Brenda Laurel, Nicole Lazzaro, Holin Lin, Jacki Morie, Helen Nissenbaum, Celia Pearce, Caroline Pelletier, Jennifer Y. Sun, T. L. Taylor, Brian Winn, Nick YeeInterviews with Nichol Bradford, Brenda Braithwaite, Megan Gaiser, Sheri Graner Ray, Morgan Romine
Girls and women as game players and game designers in the new digital landscape of massively multiplayer online games, “second lives,” “modding,” serious games, and casual games.
Ten years after the groundbreaking From Barbie to Mortal Kombat highlighted the ways gender stereotyping and related social and economic issues permeate digital game play, the number of women and girl gamers has risen considerably. Despite this, gender disparities remain in gaming. Women may be warriors in World of Warcraft, but they are also scantily clad “booth babes” whose sex appeal is used to promote games at trade shows. Player-generated content has revolutionized gaming, but few games marketed to girls allow “modding” (game modifications made by players). Gender equity, the contributors to Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat argue, requires more than increasing the overall numbers of female players. Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat brings together new media theorists, game designers, educators, psychologists, and industry professionals, including some of the contributors to the earlier volume, to look at how gender intersects with the broader contexts of digital games today: gaming, game industry and design, and serious games. The contributors discuss the rise of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) and the experience of girl and women players in gaming communities; the still male-dominated gaming industry and the need for different perspectives in game design; and gender concerns related to emerging serious games (games meant not only to entertain but also to educate, persuade, or change behavior). In today's game-packed digital landscape, there is an even greater need for games that offer motivating, challenging, and enriching contexts for play to a more diverse population of players.
ContributorsCornelia Brunner, Shannon Campe, Justine Cassell, Mia Consalvo, Jill Denner, Mary Flanagan, Janine Fron, Tracy Fullerton, Elisabeth Hayes, Carrie Heeter, Kristin Hughes, Mimi Ito, Henry Jenkins III, Yasmin B. Kafai, Caitlin Kelleher, Brenda Laurel, Nicole Lazzaro, Holin Lin, Jacki Morie, Helen Nissenbaum, Celia Pearce, Caroline Pelletier, Jennifer Y. Sun, T. L. Taylor, Brian Winn, Nick YeeInterviews with Nichol Bradford, Brenda Braithwaite, Megan Gaiser, Sheri Graner Ray, Morgan Romine
Parent perceptions of game play have a crucial role in forming the context in which children engage with digital games. However, little empirical information is known about these perceptions. The current study addresses this gap by describing a detailed analysis of open text responses by parents about their views on the popular game Minecraft. We show that parents are able to identify a broad range of both positive and negative outcomes associated with the game. We situate these observations within historical discourses about the role of screen media in children's lives, and the way that play itself is valued. Combining the insights from our data with these broader perspectives informs scholars interested in children's digital play and points to design implications.
Children’s use of screen-based digital media is presently a topic of intense public debate. In this paper we present the results of a discourse analysis of Facebook comments responding to the proposal that iPads be used by children in early years education. We found that respondents typically drew upon one of three core stances to talk about children and screen-based media use. Of these, the most dominant stance posited that children’s “screen time” was problematic. This popular discourse is out of alignment with government discourses promoting the use of screen-based devices in education. By illuminating the discord between different constructions of childhood, the role of education, and screen-based media this paper contributes to an ecologically valid understanding of the role of digital media in contemporary childhoods.
Objective:
There is growing concern that rising rates of electronic media use may be harmful. Yet the extent to which different types of electronic media use may be associated with emotional and behavioural problems is unclear. This study examined associations between emotional and behavioural problems and electronic media use during late childhood, in a large community sample.
Methods:
Participants were 876 8-9 year olds taking part in the Childhood to Adolescence Transition Study in Australia. Parents reported on their child's emotional and behavioural problems using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and on their child's duration of electronic media use (in hours: television; video games; general computer use).
Results:
Logistic regression analyses were conducted adjusting for age, SES, and body mass index z-score, separately for males and females. Males playing more video games had significantly greater odds of scoring borderline/abnormal on conduct (OR 1.07 (95% CI 1.02-1.12)) and emotional problems (OR 1.07 (95% CI 1.04-1.11)) for each additional hour of weekly use. This equates to 2.58-fold greater odds for a male that plays on average 2 hours per day per week. Television viewing was associated with greater odds of hyperactivity/inattention in males (OR 1.04 (95% CI 1.00-1.07)). There were no significant relationships for females.
Conclusions:
Given the increasing rates of electronic media use in children, these results may have important implications for child mental health. Future interventions may be more effective if they are targeted at specific types of electronic media use.
The article presents results of a study that examined the influence of gender role orientations on gaming motivations, game genre preferences, and different play styles. Applying social role theory, it was hypothesized that femininity and masculinity influence gender-typed motivations (social interaction, competition, and challenge) and preferences (role-playing and action games) as well as gender-typed behavior (cooperative play and competitive play). After collecting empirical data through an online survey, hypotheses were tested by structural equation modeling. Moreover, moderating effects of sociodemographic characteristics (biological gender, age, and educational level) were examined. Findings provide evidence for the existence of gender-typed motives of play, genre preferences, and – mediated by motivations and preferences – gaming behavior. Group analyses support a biosocial model of gender-typed gaming behavior because gender-typing of motives, preferences, and play styles varies in strength and direction by biological gender, age, and educational level.
This chapter uses the more inclusive terms digital media or technology interchangeably rather than learning technology as this reflects the broad range of devices likely to be experienced by preschool children across home and preschool environments. The different approaches to conceptualizing technology at home and in educational settings are highlighted by the language used. ICT is generally used to describe the information and communication technologies available in preschool and school, a policy term that is strongly associated with educational uses of computers and interactive whiteboards. The chapter discusses the particular requirements and perceived vulnerabilities of preschool children followed by a consideration of the close relationship between learning and play, and what this means for the use of digital media. Some of the differences between practices in preschool and home settings are outlined, concluding with reflections on the design of digital media and possible future developments.
Infants, toddlers, and preschoolers are now growing up in environments saturated with a variety of traditional and new technologies, which they are adopting at increasing rates. Although there has been much hope for the educational potential of interactive media for young children, accompanied by fears about their overuse during this crucial period of rapid brain development, research in this area still remains limited. This policy statement reviews the existing literature on television, videos, and mobile/interactive technologies; their potential for educational benefit; and related health concerns for young children (0 to 5 years of age). The statement also highlights areas in which pediatric providers can offer specific guidance to families in managing their young children's media use, not only in terms of content or time limits, but also emphasizing the importance of parent-child shared media use and allowing the child time to take part in other developmentally healthy activities.
The discussion around children’s digital game culture has resulted in two contradictory images of children: the passive, antisocial children uncritically and mechanically consuming digital game content and the active, social children creatively using and interacting with digital game content. Our aim is to examine how these seemingly contradictory ideas of “active” and “passive” children could be considered. By means of empirical examples of children playing digital dress-up and makeover games, we will point out that for the successful use of these concepts, they need to be thoroughly contextualized. By discussing the context and referent of activity and passivity, it is possible to overcome the unnecessary polarization of the discourses on children’s digital game culture. If the purpose is to advance the multidisciplinary discussion on digital games and childhood, the naive or careless use of the concepts of activity and passivity should be avoided.
The widespread popularity of sandbox games, and Minecraft in particular, may be a recent phenomenon, but their appeal may be much older. Rather than representing a wholly new development in gaming, these games may participate in a larger media ecology that flatters a neoliberal worldview. This research calls for greater attention to the coercive economic assumptions encoded in game mechanics. Drawing on scholarship in ludology, postcolonial studies, and phenomenology, it suggests that sandbox games like Minecraft habituate players to myths of empire and capital that rationalize political and economic inequality. More than simply offering a blank slate for player creation, Minecraft rewards players for assuming their entitlement to the world’s resources and thus their superiority over other inhabitants of the game world.
Minecraft (Mojang 2011) is a mysterious game; it seems odd; its pixelated aesthetic seems out of place in a world where digital games are often characterized and judged by incremental increases in verisimilitude. It is not just that it looks odd, weird and blocky; the question is how do you play it? It is not immediately clear. What is clear is that the game is a hit, a hit big enough to be the theme of the South Park episode ‘Informative Murder Porn’.1 Naturally, the episode is about how unfamiliar Minecraft is for the adults of South Park. Corey Lanskin is hired to teach the adults how to play, he describes it as a game without an objective or goal, that is just about building. From the outside, his description is about right, although the experience of playing Minecraft is far from dull. It is a game that keeps on attracting players; by June 2014, nearly 54 million copies had been sold across all platforms. On the PC it has outstripped the sales of The Sims (EA Games 1999) franchise to become the biggest-selling PC game of all time (Campbell 2014). Its success brought it and the small Swedish independent company that made it — Stockholm-based Mojang — to the attention of Microsoft, which purchased Mojang and its intellectual property for $2.5 billion on 15 September 2014 (Peckham 2014). In the postdigital age, blocks and pixels are worth serious money.
This article examine some of the ways in which girls are discursively set up as subordinate in relation to boys and men by and within the digital games industry and culture at large, and how they push back on these imposed subjects positions when engaging in media production (game development) under both regular and inverse conditions. Expanding on our previous research on gender and game play, this project explores how the hegemonic discourses of female participation in games culture are taken up by girls who want to make their own digital games. We employ a poststructural understanding of gender and power as fluid and produced through and within social relations to demonstrate how participants are not helpless victims of subjection. Rather, these girls are active in the construction of their own subjectivities, leveraging different aspects of their identity and/or exercising an institutionally sanctioned (albeit temporary) autonomy to resist discursive positioning.
Jump to sectionAbstractNotes on contributorDisclosure statementAbstractAs the types of media activities and devices available to youth have multiplied, it has become increasingly challenging to measure the amount of time young people spend with media. But although it is difficult to do so, it is still possible, and even though the methods we have are imperfect, they still offer valuable information. Detailed measures of time spent with media can offer insights into what “screen time” consists of for young people today. The commentary offers examples from data collected for the non-profit organization Common Sense through a nationally representative, probability-based survey of 2,658 8- to 18-year-olds in the US in 2015. The data challenge several commonly held assumptions, and confirm others. The commentary includes findings concerning young people’s engagement in media activities such as watching TV and online videos, playing video, mobile and computer games, using social media, reading, listening to music, and using computers, tablets, and smartphones to access the internet.
This article investigates ways discourses which are present on the virtual world gaming websites and in popular press produce constructions of ‘good parents’ and ‘good websites’ for children, and in the process create distinctions which position other parental practices and online media as undesirable. The article includes a discussion of historical constructs of parenting in relation to screen media and an analysis of discourse surrounding three websites: Club Penguin, Poptropica, and Minecraft. The analysis shows that parents are positioned as evaluators, selectors, and monitors of children’s online activities, and virtual world games are constructed as providing protection from risks experienced in other spaces, including online stranger danger, commercial contact, and various negative effects on behavior. The article discusses ways these discursive constructs concerning virtual world games draw on earlier dominant discourses in relation to parenting and screen media, embedding discussions of parenting and virtual world gaming with social and cultural hierarchies.
Minecraft is a popular building block game ubiquitous in the cultural landscape of young people. Noticing a gap in traditional library programs for virtual games such as Minecraft, children and youth services librarians at North Melbourne Library developed a collaborative Minecraft Gaming Day between librarians and young library patrons. The Minecraft Gaming Day was a uniquely creative experience linking traditional library service provision with socialisation, identity and the building of community. It challenged the traditional programming approach for young people and creating a program with young people, allowing young people to have a role in library programming, treating them as valued community members, and giving them the ability to contribute their vision to the future of library services. The combination of digital and real play spaces gave the young community a positive, educational and active way to participate in library programming and demonstrated how young people and librarians can work together to creatively help public libraries support their communities and promote social inclusion and literacy building. This article is based on ethnographic research drawing from empirical data, including staff evaluations and a focus group conducted with five young people involved with the planning and implementation of the program.
A cultural history of digital gameplay that investigates a wide range of player behavior, including cheating, and its relationship to the game industry.
The widely varying experiences of players of digital games challenge the notions that there is only one correct way to play a game. Some players routinely use cheat codes, consult strategy guides, or buy and sell in-game accounts, while others consider any or all of these practices off limits. Meanwhile, the game industry works to constrain certain readings or activities and promote certain ways of playing. In Cheating, Mia Consalvo investigates how players choose to play games, and what happens when they can't always play the way they'd like. She explores a broad range of player behavior, including cheating (alone and in groups), examines the varying ways that players and industry define cheating, describes how the game industry itself has helped systematize cheating, and studies online cheating in context in an online ethnography of Final Fantasy XI. She develops the concept of "gaming capital" as a key way to understand individuals' interaction with games, information about games, the game industry, and other players.
Consalvo provides a cultural history of cheating in videogames, looking at how the packaging and selling of such cheat-enablers as cheat books, GameSharks, and mod chips created a cheat industry. She investigates how players themselves define cheating and how their playing choices can be understood, with particular attention to online cheating. Finally, she examines the growth of the peripheral game industries that produce information about games rather than actual games. Digital games are spaces for play and experimentation; the way we use and think about digital games, Consalvo argues, is crucially important and reflects ethical choices in gameplay and elsewhere.
This paper explores queer discourses produced by a group of very popular professional video game players on social media, with particular focus on the impact that this has on the language and interactions of the fan community. Three data sets have been incorporated into this study, allowing for analysis of the central data, as well as consideration of the production and investigation of the reception of the discourse contained within. These include 63 YouTube videos, a corpus of 217,916 comments on these videos, and an interview with a gamer. While the majority of the discursive data in the YouTube videos features interactions between heterosexual males, the introduction of homosocial meaning and homosexual innuendo into videos gives the (largely adolescent, male) audience a unique opportunity to encounter, interpret, and experiment with queer discourse. It is found that the production of nonheteronormative discourses by prominent gamers online has contributed to the formation of a self-policing fan community that advocates acceptance and rejects bigotry.
Online communities have developed rapidly in the last few years, and key to this is their growing visibility outside the game itself. Fan conventions, cosplay, videos on YouTube and gamer ‘chic’ are becoming increasingly prevalent parts of mainstream culture. This article
investigates the growth of these groups through a discussion of ‘fan-producers’: gamers who make videos, machinima and webcasts. Specifically, it examines the role of the group. The Yogscast, and the game Minecraft, in developing the relationship between game and fan. It also argues
that the self-supporting nature of the gaming community has, despite some notable issues, started to change the ways in which gaming is perceived and developed. The player now takes an active role in the development and dissemination of many games – especially indie titles such
as Minecraft – and this in turn is changing the ways in which the game text is interpreted.
There is a limited literature on pre‐school children's experiences with digital technologies at home and little discussion of the ways in which children harness these technologies for their own purposes. This paper discusses findings drawn from three studies that investigated the role of domestic technologies and digital toys and games in young children's lives. Specifically, it focuses on children's early communicative and creative experiences, concluding that digital technologies have the potential to expand young children's repertoire of activities in this context. It is therefore important that pre‐school and early years specialists recognise and respond to the expertise children will have already developed by the time they enter formal education, given the increasing technologisation of communicative and creative activities, likely to continue over the life course of those born at the start of the 21st century.
Practitioner notes
What is already known about this topic
Young children's emergent communicative and creative competences in the early years represent valuable starting points for their more formal development—particularly in the context of early literacy—when they start school.
What this paper adds
This paper explores ways in which these developing competences are supported by domestic digital technologies —the wide and increasing range of technological tools, ranging from computers and mobile phones to MP3 players and technological toys and games available in the home.
It concludes that digital technologies have the potential both to facilitate communicative and creative tasks and to expand young children's repertoires.
Implications for practice and/or policy
Early years policy in the UK already draws attention to the need to build on the experiences children bring with them from home, including their experiences of using domestic digital technologies.
Practitioners need to develop imaginative ways of responding to what children already know and can do with technology, in the context of communicating and creating, given the growing significance of digital technologies in these fields.
"We'll keep releasing expansions and keep the game alive, but there needs to be some kind of final version that you can point at and say, 'I did this!'... I'm not sure why I feel a need to have something to call the final version if we're just going to keep updating it, but it just feels wrong to never have reached some kind of goal. Having the game constantly be under development also seems to confuse the press." - Markus "notch" Persson in Game Developer, Feb. 2011.
Data about analog and digital play behaviors were collected. Results show that there are significant gender differences in types of play, attitudes towards play, and technological self-efficacy in the study population. Those who play with digital technology feel more empowered in relation to digital technology than those who do not. Encouraging digital gameplay in females might increase self-efficacy towards technology and help address the current deficit of females in technology-related fields.
This article examines the notion of genre in video games. The main argument is that the market-based cate- gories of genre that have been developed in the context of video games obscure the new medium's crucial defining feature, by dividing them into categories (loosely) organized by their similarities to prior forms of mediation. The article explores the inherent tension between the conception of video games as a unified new media form, and the current fragmented genre-based approach that explicitly or implicitly concatenates video games with prior media forms. This tension reflects the current debate, within the fledgling discipline of Game Studies, between those who advocate narrative as the primary tool for understanding video games, "narratologists," and those that oppose this notion, "ludologists." In reference to this tension, the article argues that video game genres be examined in order to assess what kind of assumptions stem from the uncrit- ical acceptance of genre as a descriptive category. Through a critical examination of the key game genres, this article will demonstrate how the clearly defined genre boundaries collapse to reveal structural similari- ties between the genres that exist within the current genre system, defined within the context of visual aesthetic or narrative structure. The inability of the current genre descriptions to locate and highlight these particular features suggests that to privilege the categories of the visual and narrative is a failure to under- stand the medium. The article concludes by suggesting that the tension between "ludology" and "narratology" can be more constructively engaged by conceptualizing video games as operating in the interplay between these two taxonomies of genre.
Through an Internet survey of 536 parent–child dyads, the authors researched which mediation strategies parents used to regulate videogaming by their children (8–18 years). Factor analyses revealed that both parents and children distinguished three types of parental mediation: (1) ‘restrictive mediation’, (2) ‘active mediation’, and (3) ‘co‐playing’. These strategies are comparable with mediation types that were established in research about television. Comparing the parents’ and children’s reports it was found that both groups had highly congruent views about the application of mediation. Parental mediation of videogaming was most strongly predicted by the child’s age and the parents’s game behavior. Furthermore, parents applied more restrictive and active mediation when they feared negative behavioral effects and more often co‐played with their children when they expected positive social‐emotional effects of gaming.
The goal of this study is to determine how gamers’ reactions to male voices differ from reactions to female voices. The authors conducted an observational study with an experimental design to play in and record multiplayer matches (N = 245) of a video game. The researchers played against 1,660 unique gamers and broadcasted pre-recorded audio clips of either a man or a woman speaking. Gamers’ reactions were digitally recorded, capturing what was said and heard during the game. Independent coders were used to conduct a quantitative content analysis of game data. Findings indicate that, on average, the female voice received three times as many negative comments as the male voice or no voice. In addition, the female voice received more queries and more messages from other gamers than the male voice or no voice.
Video games are fast becoming one of the most popular media of choice among children and young adults. They are one of the newest media forms to find themselves under scientific scrutiny. To date, much of the attention has been negative, focusing on potential harm related to addiction, aggression, and lowered school performance. Scientists increasingly are examining the potential to use this immensely popular media for positive purposes, in education, in health, for students with disabilities, and to foster visuospatial cognition. This special issue concerns itself mainly with these issues: refocusing the discussion of video games away from fears that may have been exaggerated in the past, to examining whether video games may be put to some good use or are just games in the end. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)