> If your daughter is anything like mine, she loves getting badges in apps
This may sound curmudgeonly, but I try to drill into my son's awareness that he should aspire to be a producer of technology, rather than just a consumer. We face regular discussions about why he shouldn't spend $30 on Robux or some other digital currency. I try and explain that these digital currencies don't have real value like, say, a tennis racket or a pair of shoes.
As such I also try and give him the tools to fight against gamification, and not to be sucked into grinding for hours to get some badge or other worthless digital artifact.
So my 2 cents would be not to add features like this to an app aimed at kids. Let them see that there is a such a thing as a non-gamified, non-ad infested app that adds real value to their lives.
> We face regular discussions about why he shouldn't spend $30 on Robux or some other digital currency. I try and explain that these digital currencies don't have real value like, say, a tennis racket or a pair of shoes.
I’m not sure I agree. Value is a deep and multi-faceted concept. It’s very likely that your child would value the games they can purchase with Robux(it’s my understanding that Roblox has a bunch of games that can be purchased?).
I'm leaning towards what you say even more for the next generation. Assuming our society doesn't fall apart... it seems safe to assume that digital purchases/assets will be an increasing portion of our economy going forward. Teaching children the relative value of those assets (albeit non-transferable) and what that means isn't something that shouldn't be ignored.
Devil’s advocate: is it possible that Robux teach children to contribute financially to the ecosystem’s they participate in? FOSS is famously not “free-as-in-beer” yet we have created the expectation that virtual goods including software do not have financial value. Could being raised on Robux create an incentive to make modest financial contributions to software projects?
Yeah, that is why I included the note at the end. It is an important lesson for adults to teach children right now. I'm also working on teaching my daughter this lesson while we design/create our own "game" for fun on the weekends.
The idea of the badges is to teach things to deepen a child's understanding of planes (planes fly all around the world! At all heights! They are many different sizes!) instead of driving "Average Active Time Spent In The App To Get Special Widgets To Spend In The Radar Flight Store."
This may sound curmudgeonly, but I try to drill into my son's awareness that he should aspire to be a producer of technology, rather than just a consumer. We face regular discussions about why he shouldn't spend $30 on Robux or some other digital currency. I try and explain that these digital currencies don't have real value like, say, a tennis racket or a pair of shoes.
As such I also try and give him the tools to fight against gamification, and not to be sucked into grinding for hours to get some badge or other worthless digital artifact.
So my 2 cents would be not to add features like this to an app aimed at kids. Let them see that there is a such a thing as a non-gamified, non-ad infested app that adds real value to their lives.