Game On!
Have students access the student chapter Game On or display it on a screen or a digital whiteboard.
Show the first slide and ask:
- What do you see?
- Imagine that you saw this in a video game. What do you think the people who made the game want you to feel?
- What does it make you wonder about why they put it in the game?
Ask students:
Is it sometimes hard to stop playing video games?
How does it feel when you have to stop?
Have you ever had arguments with friends or family members about playing video games?
Go through the rest of the Course Presentation, explaining the different reasons why we may find it hard to quit playing games.
Ask if any of the points also apply to other digital or screen activities besides playing games, for example:
- Duty: you may feel like you should be around if your friends need to text you or connect to you on social networks?
- Random rewards: you may feel like if you aren’t reading texts or on your social networks, you’ll miss something important (something people will be talking about at school tomorrow, or something about you!)
- This is sometimes called FOMO (fear of missing out)
- Intermittent rewards: you never know when someone is going to post a funny tweet or video, or text you some juicy gossip
- Fantasy: you may be totally into the world of your favourite comic or video and want to read just one more episode
- Achievement: if you’re making something online (a game, a story, a video, etc.) you may want to do just one more thing before you quit
Point out to students that the different activities we do are like the food we eat: even if something is good, if we eat too much of it we don’t have room for other good things. That’s why we try to eat a balanced diet and why we need to balance our lives between things we do on screens, like playing video games, and other activities.
Explain to students that the kinds of foods we’re tempted to eat too much of have lots of things like salt, sugar and fat that keep us eating even when we know we’ve had enough. (Some companies even make a point of mentioning this in their ads, like the slogan for Lay’s chips: “Bet you can’t eat just one!”)
Make sure students understand that there’s nothing wrong with playing games (or eating chips) in moderation—the problem is when we don’t feel like we’re in control of how much we play (or eat).
Ask students if they have done an activity in the past. If so, what might have changed since then?