Serious Games as a Complementary Tool for Social Skill Development in Young People: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Abstract

Background The use of games for social skill development in the classroom is accelerating at a tremendous rate. At the same time, the research surrounding games designed for teaching social skills remains fragmented. This systematic review summarizes the current existing literature on social skill serious games for young people ages 5 to 19 and is the first review of serious games to note the demographic and geographic component of these studies. Method This review included papers that: evaluated a game designed to teach social skills; included measurable, quantitative outcomes; have a translation or be published in English; were peer-reviewed; date from January 2010 to May 2020; and have a nonclinical study population between ages of 5 to 19. Keywords were obtained from the CASEL 5 framework. Results Our findings are mixed but suggest that serious games may improve social skills when used alongside in-person discussion. We also found potential effects of the length of time of gameplay, intervention, and follow-up on social skill serious game effectiveness. Although this review found promising research conducted in East Asian countries and with minority samples in the United States, the majority of social skill serious game research takes place in the United States and Australia, with unreported demographic information and white-majority samples. Conclusions Due to the limited number of published studies in this area and studies lacking methodological rigor, the effectiveness of using games to teach social skills and the impact of background on social skill learning require further discussion.

Children’s Perspectives on Using Serious Games as a Complement to Promoting Their Social–Emotional Skills

“…The acceptability and the efficacy of traditional SEL programs have been previously proven [ 4 , 6 ] as has been preliminarily proven the efficacy of SEL programs using serious games [ 25 ]. Our findings seem to concur with the relevance of combining intervention strategies, as previously noted by [ 27 ], in as much as both traditional and serious games were satisfactory. Our qualitative results provided additional support for the positive effects of the interventions on children’s satisfaction.…”

“…The value of universal social–emotional learning-based programs for children in school contexts is well-known [ 1 , 3 , 4 , 7 ] but the usefulness of serious games as complementary tools to those programs is still rarely studied [ 27 ]. In the ‘Me and the Us of Emotions’ program, serious games were used as a complement to some sessions addressing emotions (e.g., joy, anger) with a learning purpose (e.g., identifying emotions and the related useful behaviors to cope with emotions).…”

“…Finally, the current study also aimed to explore children’s qualitative feedback regarding the sessions. We expect quantitative and qualitative data to converge in that using serious games provides higher satisfaction, given that previous works found that such activities are associated with engagement and motivation [ 27 ].…”

“…Using serious games for social–emotional learning is rarely done and mainly targets clinical samples (such as training empathy for children with autism spectrum disorder; [ 26 ]). In the general population, mixed results were found in the few studies that used serious games to promote social skills, as part of SEL [ 23 , 27 ]. Although some studies report the independent positive effects of serious games in promoting social skills, others indicate that serious games are beneficial when paired with in-person guided discussion [ 27 ].…”

“…In the general population, mixed results were found in the few studies that used serious games to promote social skills, as part of SEL [ 23 , 27 ]. Although some studies report the independent positive effects of serious games in promoting social skills, others indicate that serious games are beneficial when paired with in-person guided discussion [ 27 ]. Altogether, these studies stressed that continuing research on the usefulness of serious games as a complement to SEL programs is needed.…”