Online Gaming Review On Pacific Youth: Urgent Need For More Research

An expert in Pacific youth and digital spaces says a report on online gaming among Pacific youth aged 16–24 years shows an urgent need for more research exploring the link between online gaming and well-being.

University of Auckland Senior Lecturer Dr. Jean Uasike Allen is the lead author of Online Gaming and Well-being Among Pacific Youth: A Scoping Review, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand on April 9. She says the scoping review highlighted the urgent need for research in this area, given that young people make up a large portion of online gamers globally and in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Online gaming has long been regarded as problematic, with issues such as negative mental health, bullying, and gambling highlighted. However, Dr. Allen (Makaunga and Kolovai/Tongatapu, Tefisi/Vava'u – Tonga, and European) wanted to take a different approach, given some research has highlighted the potential positive impact of gaming. There is scarce research documenting the experiences and perspectives of Pacific youth engagement with online gaming, and noticeably, the voice of Pacific youth is largely absent.

“The issue with these approaches is that they often ignore the perspectives of young people, the largest population who engage in these online gaming spaces. Indigenous and Pacific youth voices are further marginalized,” says Allen.

She notes that youth engagement in online gaming is not a new phenomenon, and over the last decade, interest and engagement have grown. This is particularly evident in the growth of indigenous scholarship focused on relationality within the digital space, also known as ‘digital vā’.

“It is really important to explore digital vā. I believe that research with Pacific communities should include Pacific worldviews and concepts as a means of making sense of our experiences. From Pacific collective perspectives, relationality (the notion that we are connected to all things and everyone through our interactions) is central to well-being; and as such, building and maintaining relationships across space and time is one of the commonly shared principles reinforcing Pacific worldviews.”

Dr. Allen is currently undertaking a three-year Marsden-funded research project, "Virtual Voyagers: Amplifying Pacific Girl Gamer Voices." The project focuses on Pacific girl gamers to understand more about how online gaming contributes to their well-being and relationships.

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