Children face social pressures to spend money in games, study suggests
"If you don't play with anyone, you kind of have nothing to talk about at school."
A study conducted by Norwegian researchers has suggested children feel increasing social pressure to spend money in games.
The study, commissioned by the Norwegian government's Ministry of Children and Family Affairs, was conducted by researchers Clara Julia Reich and Kamilla Knutsen Steinnes at Oslo Metropolitan University's National Institute for Consumer Research.
An overview of the two resulting reports, originally written in Norwegian, by ScienceNorway.no reveals children the pair spoke to worried about being bullied and being unable to make friends unless they spent money to buy cosmetic items (thanks, Crossplay).
Reich said the children are "influenced by memes and trends on platforms like TikTok", and also buy in-game items which "confer status" either by having better stats or brand power. "There's no sharp distinction between their online and offline world," Steinnes added, calling them "different parts of the social world they navigate".
One 13-year-old boy in the study said "if you don't play with anyone, you kind of have nothing to talk about at school". A 14-year-old girl said she faced abuse based on her gender. "I heard things like 'go back to the kitchen', and it was like 'you're a girl, die, die, die'," she said. "It was, like, very graphic."
Children in the study spent from 100 to over 1000 Norwegian kroner (roughly £75 - £750) per year, the research reported. Many of the games this money was spent on included loot boxes, season passes, and time-limited items.
The Norwegian government is currently looking at ways to tackle manipulative game design. The country's gambling regulator joined a collaborative effort in 2019 to investigate and address the "risks created by the blurring of lines between gaming and gambling" along with 15 other countries, including the UK and the US. t In 2022, a report commissioned by the Norwegian Consumer Council concluded loot boxes are exploitative and predatory, and called for better regulation.
Research conducted by Newcastle and Loughborough Universities in 2022 also concluded that loot boxes cause "financial and emotional harm" to teenagers and children. Following demands from the UK government, the UK industry agreed to restrict access to loot boxes with a set of guidelines which must be followed by publishers. This hasn't proved to be completely effective, as researcher Leon Y. Xiao found multiple companies were in breach of the advertising regulations as of October 2023.