Level up your money game

The project will investigate:

1. How children and young people participate in ‘money games’ and what it means for their economic socialisation.
2. The influencers who set up these ‘money games’ and what economic values and worldviews they convey.
3. How platforms enable and profit from ‘money games’.

With ‘money games’ we refer to an ongoing convergence between gaming and finance. Gaming has become integrated with finance through virtual economies and currencies, which are used to incentivise microtransactions when players acquire items, participate in trade, or engage with gambling-like elements. Sometimes these virtual economies overlap with conventional ones, leading to real-money trade where virtual value is converted into conventional currencies or crypto. Meanwhile, the financial sector has become increasingly integrated with games and entertainment. Retail investment platforms accommodate an expanding customer segment of young adults with gaming discourse and gamification techniques. The phenomenon of money games is prevalent in Denmark, where most children play digital games and almost half of them either buy or trade game items or engage with gambling-like elements in games. One in ten Danish children have invested in stocks or other financial assets, and retail investment apps attract an expanding customer segment of young adults. Meanwhile, minors with moderate gambling problems are on the rise. There is extensive research on young users’ digital literacy, but very little on the implications of ‘money games’ for children and young people’s well-being and socialisation.

This project will address this knowledge gap to develop a humanities’ perspective on money games and economic socialisation among children and young people with the following research questions:

• How do children and young people engage with money games across gaming, social media and investment platforms and how does this shape their identities, social relations, and financial socialisation?
• How do diverse content creators create and shape these money games, how do they position children and young people as economic and financial actors, and what are the values and economic worldviews communicated and cultivated in the process?
• How do digital platforms enable and profit from money games and how may this inform regulatory efforts to protect children and young people in online? (WP3)

To answer these questions, the core group will join forces across platform studies, critical pedagogy, and social studies of finance.