journal of digital research & publishing - The Sydney eScholarship ...

1 P M J O U R N A L O F D I G I T A L R ESEARCH & P UBLISHING
Hidden Consumerism: ‘Advergames’ and preschool
children. Parents give the thumbs up?
By Kathryn Lewis
UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
Abstract
This article examines parent perceptions and understanding of preschool children’s use of ‘Advergames’.
The paper analyses blog posts of parents to gain a perspective of their underlying believes and values of
young children’s game use as well as current literature. ‘Advergame’ websites are becoming a popular
phenomenon of social interaction, which are promoted apparently as safe and educationally sound, but
in reality are driven by enticing monetized advertising. This study found an overwhelming acceptance
of the use of ‘Advergames’ for preschool children by their parents with no indication of concern of the use
of monetizing on the sites.
Keywords
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Introduction
Research on parental acceptance of preschool children’s use of ‘Advergame’ sites as a
branded environment on the Internet is limited. This study reports on the perceptions
and motivations of parent’s and their preschool child/ren’s use of ‘Advergames’; computer
games sites, which have purposely been designed for games playing and social networking.
In clearer terms, the sites are supported by advertising, where
“ the game is made to promote the brand” (Kretchmer 2005). Blog posts of parents
from Yahoo.com and the social website Kidswirl along with supporting literature are used
in this ethnographic study on parent perceptions of children and Advergames. It was
considered that online blog posts were worth investigation as Gosling & Johnson (2010 p.
5) consider the Internet to provide a rich and diverse source of online behavioural data not
easily accessible through normal research channels.
This study is also supported by a large empirical study from the American research
organisation, the Kaiser Family Foundation in a paper by Rideout & Vandewater (2003),
Zero to Six: Electronic media in the lives of infants, toddlers and preschoolers. The
survey looked at responses of over one thousand parents involving questions dealing with
children from 6 months to 6 years of age who use the Internet.
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