Electronic games are now an everyday part of childhood and adolescence. The debate has moved from whether children should play video games to how to maximize potential benefits and to identify and minimize potential harms. To do this, we must understand what motivates children to play electronic games and what needs the games meet. Drawing on a survey of 1,254 middle school children, focus groups with boys and their parents, and findings from other quantitative and qualitative research, the author describes a variety of motivations for video game play (including games with violent content) and how these may vary based on factors such as mood, environment, personality, and developmental stage. The findings are put into the context of normal development, and suggestions are given for parents, educators, and researchers.

Interesting article from Andreas about childrens motivations to play games and how these varies based on various factors.

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Copy the text from the PDF and paste it in a a comment to the PDF bookmark.

Interesting point, just a note on this: research on addiction states that it is located in a particular area of our brain and people get addicted to different things.Like drugs, food, gambling etc. Maybe food for you Andreas and me:) Maybe its genetic, related to life situation, environment, gender, different causes for different addictions...i dont know. Looking forward to you finding out and deciding the causes together for game addiction:) Interesting tags starts to appear here in your bookmarks:) use tags for every possible cause you identify.

maybe rise of social media is a cause...

Jørn, this is also evidence:) what kind of evidence is it (make a tag for it)?

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There seem to be no common census on a definition on what is game addiction. The main goal of this task is to build a solution or maybe a definition as Jørn proposed. There are different causes to game addiction identified by research/observation/personal opinions etc. and different evidences for it so I suggest you first research the web and collect causes of game addiction, bookmark them with explanatory tags e.g., psychological, entertainment etc. i dont know your task is to find out. Then support those causes with evidence (e.g., results from research studies, statistics, observation etc.). Use the tagging to build a collection of causes and evidence and discuss them in-situ with comments and when you have several causes and evidences then a solution/definition to game addiction start to emerge. It all depends on what the status qua is on solution/definition of game addiction now. You are not supposed to immediately find the "correct" answer to the problem with game addiction. You are supposed to use this tool together to research the topic and propose a solution/definition to it AND that will emerge as you work collaboratively with the task. Still waiting for Håvar and Andreas to participate but we continue as we wait for them to join in:)

To get started: 1) Install Diigo toolbar or Diigolet tools for bookmarking, highlighting and adding sticky notes in your browser You find the tools you can use by clicking on Tools on top menu of Diigo website. I use Firefox and therefore I use the Diigo toolbar for Firefox. Diigolet is a lighter version for those browsers that does not support toolbar plugins but it is fine to use for this learning activity;). Have a look at the tools and choose the one that suits the technology/software you will use. 2) Introduce yourself to each other in the Introductions topic under before you start the activity. Good luck! 3) Any problems then start a new topic, comment a topic and I will help you or you will help each other:) The learning activity we do here is based on the instructional method "Knowledge building". Knowledge building is: 1) a focus on idea improvement, 2) a focus on pursuing solutions to problems and not answer to questions, 3) a focus on the knowledge as valuable to the community, 4) a focus on that all ideas are treated as improvable with respect and judged according to what they can contribute to the group´s problem-solving 5) and the goals and products are emergent. For a brief introduction to Diigo and the basis of this learning activity have a look at this doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qGqmKafrnXpBAA-d-N8khfEiDVE4tjyuyUp8gt_6wFk/edit Any questions/feedback use the comment function here or add sticky notes to this Group page.