Sydney Games

"It's a Real Con": Parent Attitudes Toward Children's Game Spending

This paper examines how parents in Australia perceive children's spending on in-game purchases, arguing that parental anxieties about game monetisation often reflect broader media panic tropes rather than evidence of child harm.

• Parental anxieties about children's in-game spending often reflect broader media panic tropes rather than documented evidence of child harm, according to this Australian study of 16 Melbourne families.
• Family conflict over children's game spending centred less on experienced harm than on disagreement over the 'value' of digital items, with many parents seeing virtual purchases as less 'real' than physical goods and a 'waste of money'.
• Parents commonly cast game developers as manipulative 'villains' exploiting naive child users, singling out lootboxes, virtual currencies, and algorithmic design as the most concerning features.