Designing an activity to help reflect on "Healthy Engagement vs Video Game Addiction"

Abstract

In many homes there are discourses about the time children should spend on video games. Even though playing video games for hours is not inherently negative, finding the boundaries between healthy and harmful habits is one of the challenges that must be addressed in our time, especially when the Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) is now officially accepted. Games are a leisure activity, but behind them we can find corporations that will go to great lengths to get players engaged at a all times, crossing ethical boundaries if necessary, to get to that end. Therefore, it is very important that players, and especially children, can recognize the psychological mechanisms used in the engagement process of a game and become critical of them. This paper presents the design of a group activity that aims at reflective learning about one's behavior when playing video games, but without demonizing them validated by psychologists and psychopedagogues.