19 Education and Health Vol.32 No.1, 2014 Dr Mark D. Griffiths is Professor of Gambling Studies and Director of the International Gaming Research Unit, Psychology Division, Nottingham Trent University. For communication, please email:
[email protected] Mark D. Griffiths Child and adolescent social gaming: What are the issues of concern? ver the last year, there have been an In my own household, the two most popular Oincreasing number of media reports about games played by my family at the moment are the potentially exploitative and/or addictive the competitive casual games Candy Crush Saga nature of various types of social game that can and 4 Pics, 1 Word (both highly popular games either be played via social networking sites or across the UK more generally). In fact, at the be played after downloading apps from online time of writing this article, the most popular commercial enterprises such as iTunes (Griffiths, game being played worldwide on Facebook was 2013a). Most social games are easy to learn and Candy Crush Saga (CSS) with over 133 million communication between other players is often people playing monthly. Most players of CSS (but not always) a feature of the game, and they appear to be adult but around 10% of players typically have highly accessible user interfaces are thought to be adolescents. Clearly, most that can be played on a wide variety of different people that play social games find them fun and devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets, PCs, laptops, enjoyable to play with little or no problem. etc.). According to Church-Sanders, (2011) there However, I have been receiving an increasing are eight different types of social gaming (see number of emails from parents, teachers, and Table 1), most of which can (and are) played by the press about some of the more negative children and adolescents.