Today, we enjoyed a creative e-safety workshop called ‘ Game Over’.
After a few warm up games, we were introduced to the plot. An online game where people collect coins and play against others has got much of the world addicted (sound familiar?). People are no longer sleeping well, people cannot focus their minds fully on anything else and the world is beginning to self-destruct.
We created our own avatars and joined the virtual world. In order to join, we had to sign up using our names, age, phone number and location. Then people asked us to be friends with them, in return, they offered us a reward: online currencies, game rewards etc. Shockingly, many of us said we would accept the strangers requests.
We learnt about the dangers of accepting friend requests from people we don’t know and what we can do if this happens: report them, block them and tell an adult we trust.
Lots of us admitted to playing games that are rated a 12. Some of us admitted playing games that have an age-rating of 18. We created a short piece to show what might changes might occur to us after we’ve played games like these.
Our short plays showed increases in violence, trouble sleeping and fall outs with family and friends.
