Five Ways Social Gaming Platforms Harm Young People
Gaming is becoming the new social media, especially for adolescents. Popular gaming platforms like Roblox and Fortnite offer more than just “gaming.” They offer immersive, social experiences. Yet while platforms like these are often touted as hubs for social connection, self-expression, and entertainment, they are also commercial environments designed to maximize profits with little regard for the wellbeing of young players.
The Fairplay report “Buying to Belong: Youth and the Allure of the Metaverse” details how social gaming platforms maximize profits at the expense of adolescent wellbeing by recklessly exploiting adolescents’ developmental needs, most crucially their need for peer acceptance and authentic self-expression. The harmful monetization practices described in this report are already being employed in virtual reality (VR) environments with worse consequences, especially for youth. By taking decisive action now, we can protect young people from unnecessary harm and enhance social gaming platforms as spaces for positive engagement.
Key Findings
1. Design-driven pressure to spend
What it looks like: Adolescents have a developmental need for peer acceptance. Social gaming platforms are designed to make spending money on virtual goods seem like the best way to gain peer acceptance and social status. Design elements like visible pricing, leaderboards, and “see profile” features encourage social comparison, making it all-too-easy for gaming communities to turn rare and expensive virtual goods into status markers. Design elements like countdown clocks and rotating shops activate FOMO (fear of missing out) and inflate the perceived value of virtual goods. Hallmarks of scarcity marketing, FOMO-activating design elements like these have a particularly powerful effect on adolescents because adolescents are still developing their capacities for impulse control and are developmentally-primed to seek social rewards. The consumerist cultures these platforms cultivate encourage players to link self-understanding to virtual goods and make the consequences of missing out on the opportunity to purchase a status-signaling virtual good very real, encouraging compulsive use and overspending.
What young people are saying:
“But sometimes, when, like, their avatar looks cool, like, that attracts people like in Roblox. Some avatars, like, some things cost more money, and the people who have those accessories tend to attract more people ‘cause they look cooler.” –12-year-old Black-identifying focus group
“People will bully [. . .] if you’re like a default, and you don’t have nothing.” –9-year-old, 4th and 5th grade focus group
“I guess it makes you feel good about yourself to, like, have something that’s like limited. And some people can’t get it. And it’s kinda cool how you were there in a certain period of time when you can get something that not everyone can get.” –11-year-old, 4th and 5th grade focus group
2. Financial harm
What it looks like: Design-driven pressures to spend have real life consequences for families’ bank accounts. In addition to designs that encourage spending by facilitating social comparison and linking self-understanding to virtual goods, social gaming platforms heighten the risk of financial harm by making it easy for kids to spend thousands of dollars over time on virtual goods without even realizing it. Players purchase virtual items using virtual currencies like Robux or V-Bucks. The dollar value of these currencies varies, and most virtual items are inexpensive. Design features like loot boxes (which offer variable rewards) enhance the power of these obfuscation techniques by activating powerful feedback loops that reinforce compulsive purchasing behavior by tapping into the brain’s dopamine system.
What young people are saying:
“They only care about the money, and then they just charge a lot just so they can get it, and they make everything hard to get where you have to pay for it.” –13-year-old, Black-identifying focus group
“Well generally, but more like, I don’t know . . . it’s like, and it feels kinda odd to say this, but it’s almost like class society. Like, kind of like, if you are just, like, someone who doesn’t buy anything at all, you are generally at the lowest end. And then the people who have, like, the best items that everyone wants are like the highest.” –14-year-old, LGBTQ+ focus group
3. Racism and homophobia
What it looks like: In social gaming platforms, players are subjected to racism and homophobia through voice chat and text-based interactions. Many platforms also sell virtual goods like Nazi flags and KKK robes, facilitating harassment targeting kids who use avatars with darker skin tones or that signal LGBTQ+ identity. Moreover, platforms compound the harmful effects of identity-based bullying and exclusion in multiple ways. For example, when platforms make default, free avatars white (as Roblox does) non-white players must pay money (or grind) to create avatars that look like them. Whiteness is reinforced as normative. Additionally, when platforms choose to sell identity-affirming virtual items such as pride flags only within certain time windows (like Pride Month), diversity and inclusion becomes little more than a marketing ploy. By commodifying identity in these ways, social gaming platforms undermine the authentic self-expression they claim to support while facilitating social experiences that can erode self-worth and contribute to mental health issues, which are already heightened for socially-marginalized youth.
What young people are saying:
“Like you could just be wearing like, I don’t know an LGBTQ flag and someone be like, ‘Oh, my gosh! What are you doing?…Let me just say some things about you’ or they’re just whatever, or they follow you around and actually antagonize you in the game.” –13-year-old, LGBTQ+ focus group
“Yeah, but like in voice chat games like people, they I don’t really, you know like, they put on a darker skin tone so they can like…troll. They’re pretending to be Black, and then they start being racist.” –12-year-old, Black-identifying focus group
4. Harm to Physical and Mental Health
What it looks like: Social gaming platforms use behavioral psychology to maximize engagement and time spent on the platform at the expense of sleep, physical activity, and other actions that promote physical and mental health. Social features like leaderboards and friend lists encourage players to stay engaged with each other and the platform, tapping into adolescents’ predisposition toward reward-seeking behavior and developmental need for social belonging and peer acceptance. Variable rewards, streaks, and the ability to grind for rewards encourage habitual and even compulsive engagement. Storylines and virtual goods based on favorite brands and franchises can increase emotional attachment to the platform. Item shops featuring inventory that changes daily or even hourly activate FOMO, increasing the frequency with which kids return to the platform. These engagement-maximizing strategies are so effective that even when young people experience harassment on a platform, they often feel compelled to remain engaged with that platform, exacerbating feelings of stress and anxiety.
What young people are saying:
“Sometimes I’ll be playing always for hours on end, and it’s just a sense of relief, once I finish it.” –13-year-old, Black-identifying focus group
“Or sometimes the games can get boring like Fortnite, and you don’t want to play. But when you spent so much money on the game, it’s hard to quit.” –14-year-old, 9th and 10th grade focus group
5. Distorted play
What it looks like: Unstructured, creative play is crucial to the development of cognitive, social, and emotional skills. Social gaming platforms replace imaginative, unstructured play with repetitive, goal-driven activities like grinding for currency. Social influence mechanisms, such as leaderboards or visible pricing, shift focus from having fun to competing for status. When play becomes transactional and enjoyment synonymous with consumption, prioritizing virtual success over developmentally-necessary real-world relationships and activities becomes all too easy.
What young people are saying:
“Honestly, like, you don’t have to… just grind all day to just get all the currency in the game, just to get that one egg, one chest, or one egg. You can just like, buy multiple if you have enough [currency] or you can just buy like different types [of virtual goods] and make it more like more fun. –10-year-old, 4th and 5th grade focus group
“[I]t’s like you, you’re spending your time grinding on a level and then, and then someone who already bought everything in the game just comes over and kills you.” –13-year-old, Black-identifying focus group
These harms will be amplified in a fully realized metaverse.
As gaming evolves into virtual and augmented reality (XR) spaces, these harms are likely to intensify. Driven by profit motives, social gaming platforms are not likely to regulate themselves. To protect young users, policymakers, educators, and caregivers must advocate for child-centered design standards and stricter regulations. These measures are essential to fostering safer, more equitable digital environments where young people can socialize, explore, and express themselves without compromising their wellbeing.
To read the full report, click here.