By: Carter Cox
The article I read this week was about reaching African American youth in regard to sexual health education through mobile media. The article starts by addressing that the relationship between adolescents and sexual health education is problematic - the author even goes as far as labeling it a “public health crisis”. Some of the factors of this “crisis” include economic and racial disparities, a lack of access to screening, and an overall failure of proper sexual education.
Although the article extensively identified why there is a problem when it comes to youth sexual health education, it also provided a solution: video games. The article stated that serious video games were becoming increasingly apparent in sexual health education and other forms of education. Serious video games were defined as interactive computer applications that tasked users with overcoming challenging goals in a fun and educational matter. Serious video games also feature a component of quantitative scoring and is supposed to prepare the user with skills and knowledge that can be applied in the real world. The main difference between serious and non-serious video games is that serious video games prioritize learning and non-serious video games prioritize entertainment.
Video games are a great medium to target youth demographics. According to the article, 90% of teens admit to playing video games, and a quarter of the entire population believe they spend too much time on video games. When beginning the study, 86 African American participants aged 15 to 21 were included.
The main findings of the study supported the idea that African American youth preferred testing dating simulations. Due to the personalized and entertaining yet realistic nature of these simulations, it is suggested that serious video games can provide serious educational benefits with adolescents. Each participant encountered different storylines (there were a total of seven different “missions”), which encourage participants to take the design seriously. In these simulations, users made realistic choices regarding their sexual health which led to them to virtually “experience” the consequences. Some simulations featured topics like using condoms, the health impacts of STIs, sexual assault, and even the impact of substance use on sexual behaviors. However, almost all simulations included information on topics such as STI risk, abstinence, and sexting.
Overall, finding the balance between entertainment and education is crucial for these serious video games to be effective. If users are bored or genuinely disinterested in these simulations, they will very likely have zero impact. Factors like avatar customization, realistic dialogue, and engaging gameplay really do have a strong effect on what takeaways the users have. For example, one participant said that including different locations for avatars to explore significantly increased the enjoyment of their experience. One of the most important factors for the success of these simulations is that teens have to perceive them as realistic. If the designers do not incorporate up-to-date dialogue or other cultural characteristics, adolescent users will never relate to the tasks at hand. In conclusion, serious video games have a lot of upside when improving sexual health education for adolescents of all backgrounds.
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