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 IV-EUROASIA
International Congress on Multidisciplinary Studies
August 25-28, 2019 / Shymkent, Kazakhstan

VIDEO GAMES AS A SOCIALIZATION AGENT FOR THE YOUTH: AN EVALUATION

OF AN OFT-OVERLOOKED FIELD
GENÇLER İÇİN BİR SOSYALİZASYON ARACI OLARAK VİDEO OYUNLARI: SIKLIKLA
GÖZ ARDI EDİLEN BİR ALANIN BİR DEĞERLENDİRMESİ

Aykut SIĞIN
Dr. Aksaray University Department of Sociology

ABSTRACT
The term “socialization”, in its simplest sense, could be used to refer to the series of activities of mixing
with other people found in any given society. The term becomes especially significant when the youth
are taken as a group of people in the process of learning to behave in a way that is acceptable in a
community. The phenomenon of video games, born at the onset of the digital age as its natural
consequence, on the other hand, is a commonly-preferred form of entertainment for the youth and is
thus expected to be a part of their socialization processes. The aim of the current study is to investigate
the form of media known as video games in terms of their functions of youth socialization by means of
carrying out a comprehensive literature review. For this purpose, first of all, a discussion of the term
“socialization” with a special emphasis on the youth was carried out. Secondly, a brief history of video
games and the related media, such as video game magazines, websites dedicated to video games and
YouTube channels, Facebook, Instragram and Twitter pages on gaming services, and their evolution
through generations were given. After that, the function of both offline and online video games as a
socialization agent was evaluated. The importance of the study lies in the fact that it bridges a gap in the
literature of youth studies regarding the social functions of video games. The results of the study clearly
indicate that video games constitute a specific community, generally referred to as “gamers”, with its
own set of rules and play a vital part in youth socialization.

Key Words: The Youth, Socialization, Video Games, Gamers

ÖZET
En basit anlamıyla “sosyalizasyon” terimi, herhangi bir toplumdaki diğer insanlarla kaynaşmak için
gerçekleştirilen çeşitli etkinlikler serisine işaret etmek üzere kullanılabilir. Söz konusu terimin, gençlerin
bir topluluk içerisinde kabul görecek şekilde davranmayı öğrenen bir insan grubu olarak ele alındığında
daha da önemli bir hâle geldiği görülmektedir. Diğer yandan dijital çağın başlarında, onun doğal bir
sonucu olarak ortaya çıkan video oyunları olgusunun ise gençliğin sık sık tercih ettiği bir eğlence biçimi
olduğu bilinmektedir ve buna bağlı olarak da söz konusu olgunun, gençlerin sosyalizasyon süreçlerinin
bir parçası olması beklenmektedir. Bu bağlamda, mevcut çalışmanın amacı, video oyunları olarak
bilinen eğlence ortamının gençlik sosyalizasyonu açısından işlevlerine kapsamlı bir literatür taraması
aracılığıyla bir göz atmaktır. Bu amaç doğrultusunda her şeyden önce, “sosyalizasyon” teriminin gençlik
olgusuna özel olarak vurgu yapılacak şekilde bir tartışması yürütülmüştür. İkinci olarak ise, video
oyunları ve video oyunları dergileri, video oyunları temel alınarak hazırlanmış internet siteleri, video
oyun hizmetleri üzerine hazırlanmış YouTube kanalları, Facebook, Instagram ve Twitter sayfaları gibi
ilgili kitle iletişim araçlarının kısa bir tarihçesi ve bunların nesiller boyunca gözlemlenen gelişimi ele
alınmıştır. Daha sonra da hem çevrimdışı hem de çevrimiçi video oyunlarını içerecek şekilde video
oyunlarının bir sosyalizasyon aracı olarak işlevi değerlendirilmiştir. Çalışmanın öneminin, gençlik
çalışmaları literatüründe yeterince çalışılmadığı anlaşılan video oyunlarının sosyal işlevleri gibi bir
konudaki açığın kapatılmasına katkı sağlaması olduğu öne sürülebilir. Çalışmanın sonuçları açık bir
şekilde ortaya koymaktadır ki video oyunları genel olarak “oyuncular” olarak anılan ve kendine ait bir
kurallar setine sahip olan belirli bir grup meydana getirmekte ve gençlik sosyalizasyonunda büyük
ölçüde önemli bir rol oynamaktadır.

Anahtar Sözcükler: Gençlik, Sosyalizasyon, Video Oyunları, Oyuncular

ISBN:978-605-7695-45-1 Proceedings Books www.euroasiasummit.org 218

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INTRODUCTION
It might be true that the world population is growing older and, especially in the West, more and more
couples decide not to have children. However, this should not be taken to mean that the issues of the
youth are any less important than the issues of any other age group. In fact, although the world
population could be said to be getting older, according to the Population Facts-sheet entitled “Youth
Population Trends and Sustainable Development” published by the United Nations (2015, p. 1), in 2015,
one out of six people worldwide fell under the category of “youth”. The same sheet also projects that
the youth population is expected to increase by 7% by 2030, from 1.2 billion to about 1.3 billion globally.

A main “issue” of the existing youth population involves their socialization process. Even though the
concept of socialization will be discussed in detail under the following heading, a simple definition of
the term could be the series of activities of mixing with other people found in any given society. In a
fragmented “post-modern” world where customs and traditions fail more often than not to guide the
young in such social institutions as the family and school in their attempts of the socialization of the
young, leisure or free-time activities come into play.

As primary research topics of sociology of everyday life or of a “third sociology” (Sztompka, 2008),
free-time activities might range from sports, cultural events and entertainment to community service.
One such leisure activity is playing games, or video games, to be more specific. The importance and
prevalence of this have increased thanks to the advances made in technology and communication
services over the last years. Wiley Electrical and Electronics Engineering Dictionary (2004) defines a
video game as “a computer program in which one or more users interact with the computer and/or other
players, for amusement or competition”. As is clear from the definition, playing a video game might
involve more than one person and even when it does not, communities that serve the purpose of
discussing a video game exist. These facts point out to the social aspect of video games and thus the
need for a study such as this particular one.

The aim of this study is to investigate video games, an area in youth studies that is often overlooked or
looked at from negative angles such as the risks they pose to one’s health or their relation to decreased
school success, in terms of how they function as socialization agents for the youth. With this aim in
mind, firstly, the concept of socialization will be discussed with a special emphasis on the youth. A brief
history of video games and the related media will be given afterwards. Following that, the main
arguments of the study will be put forward while exploring both offline and online video games and
their effects on the socialization of the youth. The study will be concluded with a general overview of
the discussions made along with suggestions for further studies for this fruitful-yet-neglected research
area.

1. UNDERSTANDING THE CONCEPTS OF SOCIALIZATION AND THE YOUTH AND THE

SOCIALIZATION PROCESSES OF THE YOUTH
Socialization is one of the most important topics in fields such as sociology, social psychology, social
anthropology and education, since it paves the way for the understanding of such broad matters as the
nature of interpersonal relationships, the dynamics between social institutions and the individual, group
belongings, isolation, exclusion and the formation of the self and identity and the way they are formed
as part of a community.

Oxford Dictionary of Sociology (1998) defines the term as “the process by which we learn to become
members of society, both by internalizing the norms and values of society, and also by learning to
perform our social roles (as worker, friend, citizen, and so forth)”, whereas The SAGE Dictionary of
Sociology (2006) defines it as “the process through which a person (especially a child) acquires both
the knowledge and the personality necessary to become a full member of a society”. These two different
definitions of socialization, and the one provided before, have one thing in common and that is the
emphasis placed on becoming part of society. While many other different definitions of the term could
easily be given here, all of them would inevitably lead the reader to the realization that socialization is
in fact the ongoing process through which individuals are transformed into members of society, or of
social groups (Grusec & Hastings, 2015, p. xi).

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While it is a process whereby the interplay of many variables should be accounted for (see Figure 1),
what might come to mind at first in the form of keywords when the notion of socialization is thought of
are “family”, “school”, “mass media”, “gender” and “community”. It should come as no surprise that
the family plays a major role in a person’s socialization, especially when the viewpoint of some
researchers who posit that socialization is limited to one’s childhood years (Gould, 2011, p. 88) is taken
into consideration.1 The socialization process within this period consists mostly of the family handing
down their values to the child. Although it is difficult to pinpoint when exactly a child develops their
gender identity, it is safe to assume that around the same period of time, the child starts to experience
what is called “gender socialization”, as parents, primary agents of socialization at this point, teach him
or her what is expected of him, as a boy, or her, as a girl, by society (Kretchmar, 2011, p. 102). When
the child reaches school age, he or she is introduced to a bigger social group than his or her family. In
place of primary caregivers, there is now the school management, teachers, other students, janitors and
a whole new set of rules to abide by. According to Berns (2013, p. 186), schools influence children
through 1-their educational programs leading to achievement; 2-their formal organization; and 3-the
social relationships that evolve in the classroom.

Figure 1: Socialization involves all kinds of bidirectional interactions between the individual and the
different systems of society over time (Berns, 2013, p. 35).

1The author is of the opinion that socialization is a lifelong process (Macionis, 2012, p. 104) and should be thought of in terms
of age groups or time periods (e.g., “early socialization”, “youth socialization”, “socialization in old age”). However, this is
not to say that the family is not the most vital social institution in the socialization process of most children.

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In all these stages, both the media and communities that one participates in play a continuous and ever-
present role. The old media exerts its influence especially in the form of radio and television broadcasts
and picture-heavy magazines and books, while the new media provides content such as pictures, videos,
music and video games of all sorts in childhood, all of which present the child with quite diverse societal
possibilities unbound by his or her immediate surroundings. The socialization effects of the media not
only continue well into adulthood and beyond, but they do so in an exponential manner, with the
development of literacy skills and the ability to get to content which was out of reach before. As such,
the media is a key socialization “medium”.

Communities or social groups manifest themselves as peer groups with whom the child plays games or
has an education in childhood and go on to include people of all age groups and all kinds of activities as
he or she reaches adolescence. Communities are of utmost importance for the aims of this particular
study, as the community known as “gamers” constitutes its research subject along with video games, a
medium more prevalent in the digital age than ever before. Entertainment Software Association (2019,
p. 7) reports the average age of gamers as 33 and yet, they have been playing video games for 14 years
on average, pushing the age group as far back as 19 years of age. The United Nations (2013, p. 1)
explains youth as the transition period from the dependence of childhood to the independence of
adulthood and regards a person who is between the ages of 15 and 24 as “young”.

The youth are one of the age groups which experience the effects of the media directly and continuously
on a daily basis. The time spent without being in interaction with some kind of media is almost non-
existent in the digital era. The media could be found in living rooms, schools, workplaces, restaurants,
private cars and public transportation systems or on the street. The technological advances being made
today are so great that the concept of space is often irrelevant in defining what media is. Indeed, portable
devices such as smart phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) or handheld gaming consoles made it
possible for the media to permeate all spheres of life.

Minnow & LaMay (1995, p. 5) assert that “by the time most Americans are eighteen years old, they will
have spent 15,000 hours in front of a television set, about 4,000 hours more than they have spent in
school, and far more than they have spent talking with their teachers, their friends, or even their parents”.
Written in 1995, this remark does not only hold true to this day, it has more serious implications. Firstly,
the assertion made about the American youth applies to the young population all over the world thanks
to the effects of globalization. Secondly, the passing of the years has only extended the means and range
of mass communication. Roberts, Foehr & Rideout (2005, p. 10) note that their findings in 1999 led
them to label young people’s media environments as “media rich” (Roberts et al., 1999), whereas their
findings from 2004 made them use the term “media saturated”. This clearly shows the evolution of the
media in a period of 5 years.

Moreover, Prensky’s (2001, p. 1-2) dichotomy of “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” sheds more
light onto the impact of the media on the youth. While a digital native, one who was born into the world
of computers, video games and the Internet, speaks the digital language like a native speaker, a digital
immigrant, one who was not born into the digital world but had to adopt aspects of it, might retain their
“accent” and thus not speak the digital language like their mother tongue. To exemplify, a digital native
would be expected to turn to the Internet first as a source of information, but a digital immigrant would
think twice before consulting the Internet. Translating this into the issue at hand, it becomes apparent
that the digital native youth of today socialize through and with the media more than the digital
immigrants of the past. This is in line with the redefined life goals of people in a changing world (Shafer,
1990, p. 4).

2. A BRIEF HISTORY OF VIDEO GAMES AND THE RELATED MEDIA

Devised in 1947, Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device is the first form of a video game. The device
looked like a radar and the aim was to control a missile to fire at targets. The influence of the World
War II on the device was obvious. What followed it in 1951 was the NIMROD computer, the world’s
first gaming computer. The purpose of the computer was to play Nim, a mathematical strategy game.
OXO, which came out in 1952, was used to simulate a game of noughts and crosses. The year 1958 saw

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Tennis for Two, which allowed two people to play an electronic tennis game using two controllers.
Spacewar! made its debut in 1961 and let two players control two spaceships each in an attempt to
destroy one another. Even though they were nowhere near the quality of the video games of today, all
these games set the standards for upcoming games. (Sığın, 2012, p. 4)

In 1972, a video game called Pong, founded on the premises of a table tennis sports game, gave birth to
what might be called the “video game community”. Pong was so popular among people that arcade
machines that let people play video games became more common in places like malls, fairs and the like.
The popularity of the video game led to the emergence of many other similar games and the game having
an extensive media coverage, which in turn contributed to the growth of the video game industry. Arcade
centers were still popular, but an alternative to them was on the horizon: home consoles. (Sığın, 2012,
p. 4)

With the advent of home consoles, a generational timeline for video gaming began. The first generation
could be said to have started when the first console to make its way to consumer homes, the Brown Box,
was released in 1967. This period was highlighted by Pong variants. The second generation, which
started in 1977, mainly saw electronic tennis-inspired games. The noticeable console of the time was
the Atari 2600, which was one of the first in allowing the player to use external cartridges to play
different games, a trait modern gaming still makes use of in the form of discs. The landmark console of
the third generation, which started in 1983, was the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), a system
that remained the best-selling home console for a very long time. The SEGA Master System was the
other console of this generation. Generation four started in 1988. Also called the “golden age of
gaming”, this period saw the rivalry between SEGA’s Genesis and Nintendo’s Super Nintendo (SNES).
SEGA began to cater to adults as much as they catered to children in this generation, laying the
foundation for the idea that gaming was not only for children. Amidst the rivalry between SEGA and
Nintendo, it was actually a third contender, Sony, that emerged victorious and the fifth generation of
gaming began with the Sony PlayStation in 1994. The PlayStation got rid of game cartridges in favor of
CDs. The other console of the generation was the Nintendo 64. The sixth generation started in 2000.
This generation was dominated by a rivalry between the Sony PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Xbox, with
Nintendo focusing more on handheld devices. The notable consoles of the seventh generation, which
initiated in 2005, were the Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii, all of which had
online multiplayer functionality, an indispensable feature of the gaming industry today. (“An exhaustive
history,” 2018) The eighth, and the current, generation of video game consoles began in 2012 with the
release of the Nintendo Wii U. The Sony PlayStation 4 and the Microsoft Xbox One followed it. The
next generation is expected to start by 2020 (Williams, 2018).

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Figure 2: Two table tennis-themed games, Pong (1972) (Left) and PingPong Kings VR (2018)
(Right), show the evolution of video games over the years.

Video game journalism advanced in parallel with the industry which it is a part of. The publications
serve the main purpose of giving information about video games and related events such as community
gatherings and in doing so, they contribute to the establishment of a (discourse) community whose
members share the same discursive and rhetoric interests (Sığın, 2012, p. 73). First published in in 1974,
Play Meter was a trade magazine that covered arcade games. It was in 1981 that the first consumer
gaming magazine, Computer and Video Games, made its debut in Britain. The United States of America
met its first video game magazine, Electronic Games, several weeks after the publication of Computer
and Video Games in Britain. In mid-80s, many video game magazines were introduced in Europe. In
the 90s, the Internet was slowly becoming common and print video game journalism started to give way
to online publishing. Websites like IGN were doing what print video game magazines were doing in an
online fashion. Starting with the early 2000s, forums started to appear and gave players all around the
world the opportunity to discuss video games, which helped in the building of a “global village” for
video game players, to employ McLuhan’s terminology. (Rignall, 2015)

Social media further solidified the video game community, as ordinary (in the sense that they are not
journalists unlike those working in print video game journalism) people broadcast live or upload pre-
recorded videos on YouTube, reviewing and discussing video games as well as showing actual game
footage and allowing for instantaneous commentary. Twitch, another live broadcasting platform, serves
a similar purpose. Official game and game developer pages/accounts on Facebook, Twitter and
Instagram help players communicate with developers directly and give fan feedback on their products.
Developers and publishers also do giveaways and announce their upcoming projects on social media,
keeping in touch with their customers and building a strong sense of community. Specialized game
rooms bring gamers together on Discord, an application designed specifically for gamers, where in-
depth game discussions are carried out. Gamers get more and more means to communicate with each
other and with the teams responsible for the creation of the games they play as progress in technology
is being made.

3. VIDEO GAMES AS SOCIALIZATION AGENTS

According to Roberts, Foehr & Rideout (2005, p. 10), as of 2004, video games are found in 83% of
American homes with children, up from 81% in 1999. Entertainment Software Association’s study

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(2019, 9) reveals that gamers play games throughout the day, with 52% playing after work, 31% while
waiting for appointments, %27 during break at work or school and 16% during a commute. More
interestingly perhaps, it is reported in the study (2019, p. 11) that 57% of parents play games with their
child at least weekly and 74% of them think that video games are educational.

Regarded by many as a male-dominant area, gaming seems to have attracted the attention of girls over
the years, as “from 1999 to 2004, the proportion of kids with video game consoles increased at a slightly
higher rate for girls than for boys” (Roberts, Foehr & Rideout, 2005, p. 11). As far as preferences in
gaming according to gender goes, male gamers aged 18 to 34 report action games, shooters and sports
games as their favorite game genres and female gamers aged the same report casual and action games
as their favorite.

It should be clear now that video games are becoming (or have become) a part of people’s lives
regardless of their age or gender.2 As was mentioned before, the process of socialization is helpful in
understanding identity formation. According to Genner & Süss (2017, p. 5-6), a key aspect of identity
formation is discovering what distinguishes one from others and how he or she interrelates with a social
group. The authors go on to discuss how the media provides the young with opportunities to identify
themselves. For instance, fictional characters in all forms of media or real-life celebrities as they appear
in the media could be taken as examples to be followed, both contributing immensely to identity
formation.

Video games are no exception to this. The characterization in video games is so rich that one could find
a sword-wielding samurai who wants to be the best, an Asian spy whose aims are obscure and next
moves are unpredictable, a professor trying to survive a zombie apocalypse, a vengeful God-slayer
making amends for his past sins, a lustful succubus who seeks fun in the human world, a young girl who
has the power to rewind time, a sick old man who wishes to have a fight to the death, an adventurous
Italian who wishes to save the princess or the ambitious owner of a multi-million dollar enterprise. More
recently, famous actors and actresses such as Ellen Page, Willem Dafoe, Samuel Jackson and Kristin
Bell appeared in video games as fictional characters, just like they would in a movie or television series.
In short, the diverse characters that video games portray contribute to the identity formation of the
young.

Another way video games might help in the socialization processes of young people is by helping them
make friends or maintain friendships. According to Lenhart (2015) 83% of teen gamers play games with
others in person and 75% do the same through online capabilities. They also play with different kinds
of people. 89% play with friends they know in person, 54% play with people they only know online and
52% play online with people who are not their friends. Besides, 36% of teens met new friends while
playing video games. In addition to being a tool for making new friends, video games, both offline and
online, also provide the means to spend quality time with friends. This appears to be the case especially
for male gamers, as Lenhart’s finding (2015) that talking to friends while playing video games is an
activity gamer boys are frequently engaged in reveals. The same study also reveals that “feeling
connected with friends” is a central theme with the majority of teens who play video games.

Yet another socializing aspect of video gaming occurs in the form of community events. While
discussions as to whether electronic sports (henceforth, eSports), organized video game competitions,
is real sports continue, taking it as a community event and focusing on its competitive side tells a lot
about its socialization effect. The first hypothesis of the social comparison theory is “there exists, in the
human organism, a drive to evaluate his opinions and his abilities” (Festinger, 1954, p. 117). By this
account and the competitive platform provided by the eSports community, people, especially the young
who tend to enjoy showing their skills, get the opportunity to compare themselves to others. In fact,
eSports not only brings together the people from all around the world who wish to compare their skills
in a specific video game to those of others in a tournament venue, but also the spectators who are either

2See Roberts, Foehr & Rideout (2005) for a more detailed analysis covering such variables as race, ethnicity and parent
education.

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present in the venue or watching live streams online, the commentators and the representatives of game
companies, all of whom together constitute a social group or a community.

Figure 3: Two professional eSports players are competing against one another to prove their worth in
the video game Street Fighter V as thousands of people spectate them live.

Such gaming events are known to have gamers constantly prepare for them, as there are almost always
big prize pools for successful individuals and teams. The preparation periods not only include
individuals and teams training by means of playing the game(s) in question, but also their sharing tips,
tactics and strategies before, during and after the events, since gaming organizations keep happening
one after the other. All in all, sharing the same interests as members of as large social groups as eSports
communities eventually leads to a socialization process where an intermingling of friendship and rivalry
takes place.

CONCLUSION
Video games have often been investigated in terms of their negative effects on the youth and their effects
concerning youth socialization have often been neglected. This study aimed to regard video games as a
socialization agent and investigate their impacts on youth socialization. With many technological
breakthroughs observed in the digital era, video games have become more widespread and readily
available to people of all ages. As the youth are one of the primary age groups playing video games,
how they interact with the medium is a question that needed to be answered. As people sharing the same
rhetoric interests and “speaking the same language”, the social group playing video games could be said,
most and foremost, to form a discourse community. This community is given the name “gamers”. Video
games affect the socialization process of gamers in a few ways. Firstly, they come to interact with a
variety of characters in video games and this has an effect on their identity formation. Secondly, they
make friends online and maintain their existing friendships through the medium. Lastly, they become
members of larger communities via gaming events such as tournaments, where a friendly-yet-
competitive environment awaits them.

Further studies could investigate video games as socialization agents by looking at the dynamics
occurring among the different members of eSports communities. Participant observations should yield
fruitful results for the researcher. A longitudinal study focusing on the effects of video games on identity
formation in terms of games played should give insights into the specific effects of the medium on the

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youth as well. A linguistic study on the manners in which the discourse community of gamers is
constructed would also prove to be interesting.

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