Policy makers: information and guidance

(1) One of the key messages associated with the study is that children’s digital play holds significant value for children’s well-being, which can be understood in terms of the RITEC-8 framework dimensions: identities, emotions, creativity, competence, relationships, autonomy, diversity, equity and inclusion and safety and security. Policy makers should embed these ideas in their guidance for the children’s game industry. It is also important that policy makers embed this message in their guidance to educators, including in curriculum documentation. 

(2) Policy makers whose work impacts on the lives of children must embed insights about children’s lives in their policy making. This needs to be undertaken in a way that is representative of diverse communities and must not be tokenistic in nature. Research with children has often characterised this process as being responsive to children’s ‘voices’. We would argue that children must be consulted on policy decisions that affect them. Their opinions and experiential accounts must be considered in this process. However, we would also emphasise the complexity of notions of ‘voice’ in research and recommend that skilled, experienced children’s researchers are involved in these processes. 

(3) The study emphasises sophisticated and diverse critical digital literacy skills that can support children’s well-being and protect them from harms, for example: understanding how advertising mechanisms work in the context of digital game play; how game play and social interactions online might affect one’s emotional state; how and why trading scams might operate within open online games; that individuals should not attempt to replicate physically dangerous activities experienced or observed in digital play contexts; or how game mechanics might support or hinder feelings of representation. Based on this evidence, and a growing body of similar findings, there is an urgent need for critical media and digital literacy skills to be embedded in the design of curriculum for children aged 6-12. 

(4) Beyond this, the study points to the need to develop a policy approach to digital well-being that is much broader than a focus on online safety and the management of risks. Technology permeates many aspects of children’s lives and a holistic approach to digital well-being is needed. As well as learning critical digital literacy skills, children must also learn how to develop and manage a digital play portfolio that makes them feel good, is fulfilling, is supportive of their identity explorations and fruitful for their friendships and family relationships.

(5) One way of starting to address digital inequalities is to lobby for a reduction in data costs in the Global South. South Africa still has one of the most expensive home fibre internet connections of any country, according to a recent survey. 

(6) Policy makers should consider providing more support to parents and carers, including Grandparents, on how to mediate children’s digital play. Parents and carers frequently feel that this is a world outside of their own understanding, and so family digital play and learning programmes could be undertaken in which parents are introduced to strategies which can be used to strengthen the well-being outcomes of children’s digital play.