Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children
Digital technology, play and child well-being
New research from UNICEF Innocenti and produced in partnership with the University of Sheffield, New York University, City University New York and the Queensland University of Technology explores the question: can video games contribute to the well-being of children and, if so, how? This research looked to the voices of the young, based on the scientific study of hundreds of children in six countries over many months.
The research found something remarkable: digital games can indeed contribute to the well-being of children. They can allow children to experience a sense of control, to have freedom of choice, to experience mastery and feelings of achievement. Digital games can support children in experiencing and regulating emotions and help them feel connected to others and manage those social connections. Children can imagine different possibilities, act on original ideas, make things, and explore, construct and express facets of themselves and others. All with the help of digital games.
But in order to support children and contribute to their well-being, games must be designed with their well-being in mind.
This research was produced as part of the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) project. This project was co-founded with the LEGO Group and funded by the LEGO Foundation and aims to create practical tools for businesses and governments that will empower them to put the well-being of children at the centre of digital design.
The research forms the basis of RITEC’s second report. The first report, released in 2022, revealed a newly developed well-being framework for children. Made up of eight child-centric well-being outcomes, the framework is a first step towards helping tech developers and policymakers develop a common understanding of how digital experiences can positively influence aspects of child well-being.
The project is underpinned by a series of principles
Child-centric
We have prioritized co-creation with children, and have sought to be led by their understandings of well-being and play.
International and representative
We have adopted an international approach, prioritizing countries that are typically less represented in research in this area.
Data-driven
Our findings and assertions are data-driven and evidence-led.
Open and transparent
Phase 1 and Phase 2 reports will be shared publicly, enabling other organizations to view and assess their findings.
Collaborative
We adopt a collaborative approach, building on past efforts and welcoming other like-minded actors and organizations to replicate and improve on our work.
Aspirational
We believe in the potential of digital technolgoy to have a positive impact on children’s well-being, and it is our ambition to work towards this outcome.
Overview
Children are spending more time in digital spaces than ever before, using a range of mobile apps, social media platforms, connected devices and online games from ever earlier ages. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has intensified this shift, rapidly moving additional aspects of children’s daily lives online. The growing presence of digital technology in children’s lives requires that we think deeply about its impact. It also demands we consider how we shape that impact best to equip and empower children for success well into their adult years.
Digital experiences can have significant negative impact on children, exposing them to risks or failing to nurture them adequately. Nevertheless, digital experiences also potentially yield enormous benefits for children, enabling them to learn, to create, to develop friendships, and to build worlds. While global efforts to deepen our understanding of the prevalence and impact of digital risks of harm are burgeoning – a development that is both welcome and necessary – less attention has been paid to understanding and optimizing the benefits that digital technology can provide in supporting children’s rights and their well-being.
Benefits here refer not only to the absence of harm, but also to creating additional positive value. How should we recognize the opportunities and benefits of digital technology for children’s well-being? What is the relationship between the design of digital experiences – in particular, play-centred design – and the well-being of children? What guidance and measures can we use to strengthen the design of digital environments to promote positive outcomes for children? And how can we make sure that children’s insights and needs form the foundation of our work in this space? These questions matter for all those who design and promote digital experiences, to keep children safe and happy, and enable positive development and learning. These questions are particularly relevant as the world shifts its attention to emerging digital technologies and experiences, from artificial intelligence (AI) to the metaverse, and seeks to understand their impact on people and society.
To begin to tackle these questions, UNICEF and the LEGO Group initiated the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) project in partnership with the Young and Resilient Research Centre at Western Sydney University; the CREATE Lab at New York University; the Graduate Center, City University of New York; the University of Sheffield; the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child; and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. The research is funded by the LEGO Foundation. The partnership is an international, multi-stakeholder and cross-sectoral collaboration between organizations that believe the design and development of digital technology should support the rights and well-being of children as a primary objective – and that children should have a prominent voice in making this a reality. This project’s primary objective is to develop, with children from around the world, a framework that maps how the design of children’s digital experiences affects their well-being, and to provide guidance as to how informed design choices can promote positive well-being outcomes.
Findings
UNICEF Innocenti’s research found that digital play can contribute to many aspects of children’s well- being, but that its influence is different for different children. There was also evidence of more contribution to some aspects of well-being than others.
The research suggests the greatest gains for children occurred when digital games helped fulfil important needs that were otherwise not met in their lives. Indeed, digital games had a particularly positive impact when responding to children’s deeper interests, needs and desires – which are not universal but are influenced by environmental and cultural factors.
At the same time, not all games are equal: different games support different aspects of well-being depending on how they are designed.
The research identified 11 ‘digital play drivers’ – deep interests, needs and desires of children that games can respond to if designed for it, through different features or game mechanics. These were:
- The need to explore, construct and express identities.
- The need to experience, explore and negotiate togetherness.
- The drive to master challenges, including strategic challenges and puzzles.
- The need to understand, and meet, one’s own emotional needs.
- The need for sensory stimulation, including emotion, humour and bodily movement.
- The need to exert and express control.
- The desire to explore and extend ruling passions.
- The desire to collect, curate and classify.
- The desire to create.
- The need to empathise, tend and nurture.
- The drive to acquire and perform knowledge and skills.
Fulfilment of these, including through digital play, appear to support children’s sense of well-being.
The research shows that digital games can contribute to children’s well-being, allowing them to experience a sense of control and agency, have freedom of choice, experience mastery and feelings of achievement, experience and regulate a range of emotions, feel connected to others and manage those social connections, imagine different possibilities, act on original ideas, make things, and explore, construct and express facets of themselves and others.
Methods
The report was based on three research initiatives:
255 children aged between eight and 12 in the US, Chile and South Africa played digital games on tablets over the course of an after-school programme that lasted for between six and 12 weeks.
240 in-home visits were made to 50 children aged between six and 12 and their families in Australia, Cyprus, South Africa and the UK over a period of 14 months. This part of the research was based on conversations with and observations of the children and their families as they navigated everyday life and digital game spaces.
The heart rate, eye tracking, facial expression, and galvanic skin response of 69 children aged between seven and 13 in Australia were studied playing games, and their reactions were recorded on video. Children and researchers then worked together to analyze and interpret those results and recordings.
All children were from diverse backgrounds and different socio-economic strata.
How did we select the games for this research?
For the family case studies conducted in children’s homes, the games were those the children themselves were choosing to play. For the rest of the study, the games were selected for reasons that were pragmatic: for example, since the studies were conducted in different countries, they needed to support multiple languages, run on tablets and not demand high internet connectivity.
Ethics and safety were also a priority, and we only considered games that were appropriate for our participant’s age, and we excluded multi-player games. Other criteria were related to our main research question: Can digital games enhance child wellbeing? Since the study asked specifically whether casual games can do so, we investigated what kinds of experiences children have in casual games.
Insights
The study established that companies and designers can and should support the well-being of children through the games they produce. Our research has convincingly demonstrated that digital play has a particularly positive impact on children’s well-being when it responds to their deep interests, needs and desires.
Games designed to support children’s autonomy should focus on features that allow children to feel in control and make decisions, explore and solve problems with varying solutions, and make choices about how, when and what they build and create.
To support children’s relationships, games should focus on allowing children to make new friends, and socialize, compete, create, share and/or collaborate with others.
This needs to be done with an eye to children’s safety and security, acknowledging the risk for harm when children engage with others. The games industry needs to invest significantly more to keep children safe, especially when children interact with others.
Framework
Our new research, along with participatory workshops with 300 children from 13 countries held in 2022 and the analysis of survey datasets involving over 35,000 children, have yielded a wealth of insights about children’s well-being, digital play and the potential relationship between them. These insights form the basis for a framework and accompanying indicators. The framework and indicators are designed to be intuitive and user-friendly, on the one hand, and robust and empirically informed, on the other.
The framework and accompanying indicators are primarily intended for businesses that produce digital products and services that are likely to be accessed by children.
The framework provides a solid foundation for aspects to prioritize when designing digital experiences for children. Indicators suggest the kinds of things that companies need to be tracking, on the one hand, and designing for, on the other.
The latest research offered an opportunity to update the existing framework produced in 2022, providing insights about design features and mechanics that our findings suggest will support children’s wellbeing across aspects such as autonomy, competence, emotions and relationships when implemented in digital games.
Autonomy
Children freely choose how to engage with digital play, and experience feelings of agency, choice and freedom while playing.
Competence
Digital play experiences contribute positively towards children's perceptions of their effectiveness, ability and skills, facilitating a sense of mastery.
Emotions
Digital play experiences allow children to experience and recognize a range of emotions, and provides opportunities to learn how to regulate them.
Relationships
Digital play experiences facilitate social connection with others and a sense of belonging.
Creativity
Digital play experiences encourage children to engage curiously and use their imagination to build, invent and experiment.
Identities
Digital play experiences provide children with opportunities to explore, construct and express facets of themselves and others.
Diversity, equity and inclusion
Digital play experiences are designed to represent diverse children and childhoods and serve the access needs of as many different children as possible.
Safety and security
Children feel safe and are kept safe while engaging in digital play.
Opportunities
The research revealed many opportunities for next steps to support children in digital play. Companies and designers can use the findings to design games that contribute to children’s well-being in a variety of ways. They can:
- Allow them to experience a sense of control and agency
- Give them freedom of choice
- Allow them to experience mastery and feelings of achievement
- Let them experience and regulate a range of emotions
- Allow them to feel connected to others and manage those social connections
- Let them imagine different possibilities and act on original ideas
- Help them to make things
- Allow them to explore, construct and express facets of themselves and others.
Partners
UNICEF does not endorse any company, brand, product or service.
Research for the latest report was produced by UNICEF Innocenti in partnership with the University of Sheffield, New York University, City University New York and the Queensland University of Technology. Research partners in Chile, Cyprus, South Africa, United Kingdom and the United States, including those associated with the University of Cape Town, Curtin University, University of Cyprus, University of Oulu and the Centre for Creative Education also helped conduct this research and contributed their expert knowledge and understanding of local contexts.
Highlights
New research from UNICEF Innocenti and produced in partnership with the University of Sheffield, New York University, City University New York and the Queensland University of Technology seeks to understand how digital games can contribute to the well-being of children, based on the scientific study of hundreds of children in six countries over many weeks.
This is the second report produced as part of the RITEC project. The first report, produced in 2022, explored the question: what does well-being mean to children in a digital age? This first-phase report is also available for download.
