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This is a great question, and depends on lot on how you define 'preying'. For a brief period this was unambiguously happening; we had those news stories about
by Bartweiss 7y ago
This is a great question, and depends on lot on how you define 'preying'.
For a brief period this was unambiguously happening; we had those news stories about kids running up thousands of dollars in freemium charges, and even a few accusations of games actively avoiding password locks (e.g. by prompting for new payment just before the lock timer).
But barring parent's phones, kids mostly don't have money. So the question becomes... If a kid is asking to have their allowance deposited into Fortnite, and trying to sneak downstairs after bed to play more Fortnite, are they being preyed on? (If it's because they want to play alongside their friends who are still on, does that change the answer?) If a kid is constantly begging their parent to let them spend money in a mobile game, are they being preyed on? (Is their parent?)
Anecdotally, I've seen plenty of younger kids (5-10, maybe) who get freemium games from app stores, and then end up begging their parents to pay for various unlocks and boosts (e.g. the $1 level skips from Angry Birds, or extra lives in Candy Crush). I've also seen quite a few kids (9-14, maybe?) with relationships to Fortnite that seem disturbingly fixated and dependent, but that's much harder to judge against the simple and innocent aspect of kids getting extremely engaged with whatever they currently like playing.