Adolescents' Communicative Tone in Online Games: The Role of Context and Socio-Cognitive Abilities

Abstract

While the influx of online communication during adolescence has led to a plethora of research investigating adolescent communication through social media, other online platforms have not been afforded the same attention. Despite high rates of online gaming in adolescence and longstanding reports of communicative toxicity, little is known about many of the factors that could influence communication in this social context. In the present study, we examine how experimental manipulations of context (communicative mode, communicative partner, and prompts of perspective-taking) as well as individual differences in socio-cognitive skills influence the tone of adolescents’ communication within online games. Older adolescents, aged 15 to 19 (N = 238) participated in an immersive, simulated video game task wherein they received mildly provocative messages from teammates or opponents and responded verbally or via text. Game communication varied widely from aggressive (e.g., “You’re trash”) to prosocial (e.g., “Thanks Man”). Overall, participants were more aggressive when communicating verbally and when communicating with opponents. Perspective-taking prompts to consider the goals of the message-sender resulted in the reduction of these contextual differences by reducing prosociality towards teammates and in text-based communication. Marginal interactions between individual differences in self-reported perspective-taking and empathy and contextual manipulations indicate an interplay between socio-cognitive skills and contextual features for adolescents’ communicative tone. This work illuminates how some of the variability youth experience when gaming (Märtens et al., 2015) can be explained by game context and individual characteristics. Findings have practical relevance for adolescents and caregivers as they navigate decisions about game use. Moreover, this work adds to the growing literature as to how adolescents navigate communication in an increasingly online world and how socio-cognitive skills that are useful in offline social contexts translate to online environments.