Youth, Friendship, and Gaming: A Network Perspective

Abstract

With digital games being part of the leisure of a multitude of young people, it is important to understand to what extent gaming-related practices such as talking about games or playing games together are associated with the quality of friendship relations with players and nonplayers. Based on 100 friendship networks, this study explored to what extent those practices permeated the everyday life of youngsters and whether they could be considered as a part of doing friendship. Results indicated that gaming as a conversational topic was widespread within and between networks. Furthermore, regardless of gender, this was significantly associated with friendship quality in almost all of the networks. When considering playing games together, a somewhat different picture emerged. In contrast to conversational practices, playing together was less widespread. Moreover, both the occurrence and the effect of co-play and friendship quality was gendered. The findings of this study show that a focus on gaming-related practices yields a fruitful starting point when considering the role of digital games in a social context that is not limited to people playing (online) games. Furthermore, they also feed into the ongoing debate of possible effects of digital games in that it shows that the way in which games influence the lives of young people goes beyond a direct effects approach.

A Longitudinal Social Network Perspective on Adolescents' Exposure to Violent Video Games and Aggression

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“…Youth play video games to spend time with peers and, as such, gaming has been linked to friendship formation. 7,[23][24][25] Socialization has been shown for other media activities, such as the frequency of watching television 26 and musical taste, 27 and the peer group may influence gaming preference and behavior in the same way. Indeed, in one study, adolescent male gaming frequency was affected by the amount of time peers spent playing video games.…”

Improving the Health of Emerging Adult Gamers—A Scoping Review of Influences

“…A full-text review of the 107 articles identified studies that were not relevant to the research objective. For example, Boulos and Yang [ 30 ], De Grove [ 31 ], Crowe [ 32 ], and Foley et al [ 33 ] were removed as the focus was on children or adolescents. A final total of 75 studies were identified during this step.…”

The influence of competitive and cooperative video games on behavior during play and friendship quality in adolescence

“…Despite these findings, the majority of research still overlooks the importance of the social context in which games are played (Bowman, Kowert, & Cohen, 2015). Barring some recent exceptions (De Grove, 2014;Eklund & Roman, 2017;Verheijen, Burk, Stoltz, van den Berg, & Cillessen, 2018), gaming effects are often isolated at the level of the individual. Furthermore, social gaming studies often use convenience samples of college students who do not know each other beforehand.…”