Tech Shock - from Parent Zone
Tech Shock: everything you ever wanted to know about tech and family life. Podcasting from Parent Zone, the media literacy experts, host Vicki Shotbolt explores the upsides and downsides of family life in the digital age. With a range of expert guests, she looks at online harms to children, from pornography to gambling, and at what should be done about them. Incurably optimistic, Vicki also celebrates the many benefits of tech for children and young people, as she considers how best to live in a world in which family life is now inescapably digital. Listen every Monday, subscribe, and please give us a five star review.
Tech Shock - from Parent Zone
2. Leon Xiao: The House Always Wins. The Home Loses.
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In the second episode of Tech Shock's 12th season, Vicki is joined by Leon Xiao, Assistant Professor at City University Hong Kong, specialising in video game law and the regulation of loot boxes, gacha mechanics and other gambling-like monetisation in video games.
Neither Vicki nor Leon are anti-gaming, quite the opposite. However, gaming and gambling have been converging for years and the risks remain poorly understood by many. This episode cuts through the complexity - from loot boxes and skin gambling to gacha games and social casino mechanics - asking what parents actually need to know, why regulation is failing, and what a better approach might look like.
Talking points:
- What are the links between gaming and gambling - loot boxes, skin gambling, social casino games and gacha mechanics - and what does the emerging evidence tell us about the risks to young people?
- Why is regulation failing - from Belgium to the UK, why are existing laws not being enforced and does industry self-regulation stand any chance of working? What instead can the UK learn from South Korea's more proactive approach?
- What do parents need to know - the financial reality of loot boxes, the odds problem, and what to look out for in the games their children are playing?
Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all the latest on our work on helping families to thrive in the digital age. Presented by Vicki Shotbolt. Tech Shock is produced and edited by Tim Malster.
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