Digital play drivers
What are digital play drivers?
Our family case study research was designed to consider children’s digital play experiences holistically and in context. As discussed in other sections of the report, children’s digital play choices and practices were influenced by diverse and often intersecting factors, including specific family dynamics, practices and cultures, neurodiversity, physical differences or disabilities, a range of emotional and learning needs and dynamics between different environments, such as those between home and school. Most compellingly, however, children’s digital play choices and practices were associated with very different deep interests, desires and needs. Throughout the full report, we have emphasised some of the specific reasons that particular deep interests, desires and needs may be prevalent in the lives of particular children at particular times in their lives. In some cases, there are clear connections between digital play drivers and life experiences and factors. However, it is ultimately not possible to fully answer why children are driven by particular deep interests, desires and needs at different points in their lives.
These findings have important implications for the design of digital play experiences for children. In short, design features supportive of positive well-being outcomes for one child may not support the same experiences or outcomes for another. It is clear that, in order for the digital play needs of all children to be supported, a diverse range of carefully designed games should proliferate.
Which did we identify in the study?
In our study, the digital play choices and practices of the 50 children appeared to be influenced by eleven primary drivers, which can be arranged within six broader categories:
The drive to control, collect, curate and classify.
🎮 The need to exert and express control. This driver describes a child’s need to experience control in their life, including through, and within, their digital play.
🎮 The desire to collect, curate and classify. This driver describes a child’s desire to relate to and impose order over physical and symbolic things of personal meaning.
The drive to master challenges, acquire and perform knowledge and skills.
🎮 The drive to master challenges, including strategic challenges and puzzles. This driver describes a child’s drive to engage and persist with goals that pose significant challenges, both predetermined and personal, with an aim towards eventual mastery, including in their digital play.
🎮 The drive to acquire and perform knowledge and skills. This driver describes a child’s drive to acquire and perform knowledge and skills that are personally meaningful, including in their digital play.
The drive to explore togetherness, empathise, tend and nurture.
🎮 The need to experience, explore and negotiate togetherness. This driver describes a child’s need to safely connect and disconnect from other people, animals, communities and environments including through their digital play.
🎮 The need to empathise, tend and nurture. This driver describes a child’s need to understand, care about and attend to the needs of other people, animals, communities and environments, including through their digital play.
The drive to explore emotions and sensory stimulation.
🎮 The need to understand, and meet, one’s own emotional needs. This driver describes a child’s need to identify, understand, meet or regulate their own emotions, both individually or with support from others, including through their digital play.
🎮 The desire for sensory stimulation and exploration, including emotion, humour and bodily movement. This driver describes a child’s desire to experience a broad range of emotions (both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’) and sensory experiences, humour and bodily movement, including through their digital play.
The drive to create.
🎮 The drive to create. This driver describes a child’s desire to actively contribute to the world, drawing on resources and experiences to generate something new, including in digital contexts.
The drive to explore identities and deep interests.
🎮 The need to explore, construct and express identities. This driver describes a child’s need to safely explore, construct and express aspects of their evolving personal and collective identities, including with and through their digital play.
🎮 The desire to explore and extend deep interests and ruling passions. This driver describes a child’s desire to pursue personally meaningful interests and passions including within, and through, their digital play.
Research spotlight: Penny
'I don’t know really. It’s just a fun game to play when I’m bored. Because I can do my own thing on it, like I can play whatever I want.'
Children’s digital play appears to be driven by diverse deep interests, desires and needs. In the UK, much of 9-year-old Penny’s case (UKF1) appeared to be driven, amongst other things, by a desire to explore identities, especially emerging , more 'grown-up’ identities.
Outside of digital play experiences, Penny was beginning to tentatively explore a range of new, more ‘grown up’ identities, activities and interests for the first time, paying increased attention to her own physical appearance and expressing an interest in beginning to cook. In both cases, Penny expressed some self-doubt and self-criticism.
In her digital play, Penny also engaged in a range of role-play activities that appeared to relate to identity exploration. Bloxburg was one of Penny’s two absolute favourite digital games. In Bloxburg, Penny had designed and decorated her own home. She spent time attentively customising her avatar and changed its clothing regularly. She also liked cooking recipes in the kitchen she had designed for herself within Bloxburg. Digital play experiences like Bloxburg provided a safe and open-ended space for Penny's explorations of evolving identities. It was noticeable that when Penny was asked what was ‘good’ about Bloxburg, she frequently talked about customisation, choice and independence. Identity experimentation in the ‘real world’ appeared to carry increased cost and risk, not least because ‘real world’ identity performance is public.
In this illustration, which has been created for the project by a professional illustrator based on our research data, Penny is playing Bloxburg (Roblox) on in her bedroom. She is experimenting with her avatar's hair, make up and different outfits.
You can read many more examples like Penny's in our full report.
All of the photographic images on this page are representative of the interests and activities families told us about and are not taken from the dataset. They are all free to use images sourced via Unsplash.com (https://unsplash.com/). Unsplash photos are made to be used freely. All photos can be downloaded and used for free for commercial and non-commercial purposes and no permission is needed (although attribution is appreciated). For 'The drive to control, collect, curate and classify': Karen Vardazaryan on Unsplash. For 'The drive to master challenges, acquire and perform knowledge and skills': Jason Dent on Unsplash. For 'The drive to explore togetherness, empathise, tend and nurture': Syd Wachs on Unsplash. For 'The drive to explore emotions and sensory stimulation': Olivia Bauso on Unsplash. For 'The drive to create': Dragos Gontariu on Unsplash. For 'The drive to explore identities and deep interests': Carson Arias on Unsplash. The illustration on this page is representative of a particular family in our dataset. The illustration was created for our project by Alexandra Francis, an independent illustrator, designer, and animator based in Manchester (UK). Find out more about her work at https://alexandrafrancis.com/.