What You Need to Know About Teen Gaming

Online video gaming is a major part of life for many teenagers. Gaming offers benefits, including building and reinforcing social connections and practicing problem-solving skills. But gaming also comes with potential risks in the form of online harassment and addiction. So, while there are social benefits in having kids connect virtually, especially children who may be lonely, it’s also important to help your teen avoid possible pitfalls. 

Serena King, PhD, is an internationally certified gambling and gaming disorder counselor and Professor of Psychology at Hamline University. We spoke about teens and gaming, and various things parents should know about online gaming and prepare to do if their children are interested in or involved in it. (Our conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.) 

Eden Pontz: What do we need to know about the state of gaming for our young people today?

Serena King: As a parent, there is a lot to know about gaming. Gaming is a huge industry. And many games are built to be highly reinforcing, if not addictive. Certain features within these games make them more addictive. There are gaming products that have gambling within them. There are gaming products that don’t have gambling within them. 

They should know about things like high-frequency reward systems – design loops in the system that keep players engaged through rapid reinforcement of feedback and incentives like visual or audio cues and random loot drops. They should be aware of different types of push notifications that send messages to a player’s device – even when the game is closed – to bring players back to the game. And they should be familiar with AI-driven user engagement that helps maintain player retention by personalizing user experience in real-time. The list of features gaming developers use to make these games highly reinforcing, if not addictive, is seemingly endless. In addition, there are gambling-like products within these games. Some examples of these include Fortnite, Roblox, and a variety of other video game platforms, including CS:GO (Counter-Strike: Global Offensive) and others that have gambling-like attributes or gambling within them. 

Kids may be exposed to gambling, skins betting (where individuals may place wagers or use lotteries or microtransactions to buy virtual in-game decorative items like weapon finishes or character outfits as a currency to bet on outcomes of differing value based on their rarity and/or popularity), or loot boxes before they even know what gambling is. (Loot boxes, btw, are virtual items in video games that contain rewards like weapons or other digital goods. While in some games they are provided as part of the game, in others you may have to commit money for a loot box in order to progress further.) And I think parents need to realize and understand that their kids are probably getting exposed to gambling through their video games.

And having the conversation about what gambling and these different types of products within them are and what the risks are is essential for parents to start to think about.

EP: Should we be worried about letting our young kids play games? What kinds of boundaries should be set up around how young is too young to play video games? What kind of boundaries can be set up to ensure that our young people are protected when they first start playing video games?

SK: Don’t think your kids are too young to talk to them about the dangers of certain types of video games or about the risks and dangers of some video game platforms. It’s best to do this before your child gets involved in a game or other kids pull them into a gaming platform. It’s useful for you to do your own research – and fairly easy. You can check to determine if that gaming platform has had a lot of addiction issues or regulatory challenges. Check to see if it has gambling or gambling-like features embedded into it. 

Once you find out what’s going on with that gaming platform, work to identify the risks for your child, as each is very individual. Some children may have ADHD and be more prone to addiction or attention issues that may be made worse  by platforms. Others might be dealing with depression and get a greater rush of dopamine — a chemical messenger that plays a major role in our body feeling pleasure and satisfaction  — when they’re using these platforms. So knowing your child is going to be important in making those decisions. But also know, there are a lot of unknown risks for some of the platforms because gaming platforms get around having to talk about these risks, and more often they only come out in later legal judgments against companies, especially when gambling is embedded in games that reach underage kids. So it’s very much buyer beware. 

The developing brain of a young person doesn’t really finish development until we’re in our 20s. So starting a kid off very early on games has a lot of risk. And while some games are less risky than others, ones that have embedded loot-box-like features, use currency, or even cryptocurrency, should really not be presented to a young person until much later in life because the risks are often just too high.

EP: What do you suggest to a parent who has a child who may be socially uncomfortable but they use gaming as a large part of their social life? They often make their friends online while gaming. What do you say to parents who feel like this is a place where their kids need to be able to go because that’s where they’re making friends?

SK: For a parent whose teen or young person is maybe socially awkward or has difficulty meeting or maintaining friends and finds online gaming a place where they can have a social network, I think this can be a difficult conversation to have with your young person. I think we can, as parents, recognize that some things can be gained in these environments. People can feel very socially adept in an online environment if they don’t feel so in person. They can feel more powerful, have more status, and these types of things. I think it’s good to ask your young person what they like about their gaming. What kinds of games are they interested in? What kinds of personas are they interested in online? Why are they drawn to these games? Understand what motivates your young person to do this.

Have a conversation about how this contrasts with how they might feel during in-person interactions. Why does it feel easier online versus in-person? And that gives you a chance to have an open, non-judgmental conversation. I think it’s a very slippery slope because if we spend all our time online, then we never get to flex the muscle of having successful interpersonal, in-person experiences.

Encourage as many of those in-person experiences and make parallels between the powerful feelings you feel online and the environments where you might feel that way in person. Talk about how we can change environments to help you feel this way, as it can be very helpful to a young person. Often there are in-person gamer communities to be found as well. So we might encourage young people to meet up in person in that environment. If they’re feeling like they can only feel this way online, you’ll want to monitor what kinds of peers are showing up online and during those in-person meetings.

EP: What are some surprising things that you’re learning in your research about gaming?

SK: We didn’t use to think that gaming could be sort of a gateway to gambling or problem gambling, but the research is bearing out much more now that longitudinal studies are finding that the more gaming somebody does as a young person, the more likely they are to be introduced to gambling and also potentially have problems with gambling. Certain types of gaming platforms put kids at greater risk, like e-sports, games with microtransactions, certain types of skins, and others that are gambling products. 

Another thing we’re seeing more and more that’s impacting how video gaming might be an entry point to problem gambling is the popularity of sports betting. It’s universally the most popular form of young people’s style of gambling. And I think that’s from the growth of the online sports betting platforms and the popularity of that. The prediction markets are also really intriguing. We have very little research data, but I’m hearing anecdotally that young people, especially in spaces where sports betting is not yet legalized, are finding themselves on these prediction market platforms, which are unregulated platforms with tens of thousands of different ways to gamble. 

The video gaming space is intersecting with the gambling space. The gaming space is becoming more advanced than ever with AI, making these platforms way more addictive than they ever were before.

EP: Does a parent have any recourse if their child falls prey to gaming issues that lead to something worse?

SK: There have been some major class action lawsuits against well-known social media and video gaming platforms. Some of those lawsuits have been successful. However, it is a very difficult path to getting the companies to admit to responsibility around product design. 

EP: Are there any games left that you know of that don’t have elements that could lead to gambling or that are just plain old games where you can just move up and down levels without having to pay something down the line?

SK: The old-school style video games are a good example if they’re true old-school, like Atari games, or other types of platforms where they haven’t been as modernized. Some companies have removed loot boxes from their mobile games. 

But any mobile game, any video game, social media game, almost always has a highly addictive feature within it because the game developers understand that that’s what drives their popularity. Many video games don’t have gambling embedded in them – so that’s the hopeful side of things. Parents will want to make sure that they learn about the game that their kid is getting involved in and that it does not have a gambling-like product built inside of it. 

To learn more about teens and gambling check out our Q&A with Dr. King by clicking here.