TY - JOUR A1 - Steinkeller, Annika von A1 - Große, Gerlind T1 - Children are more social when playing analog games together than digital games T2 - Computers in Human Behavior Reports N2 - Digital media are being used more and more frequently by children and for a wide variety of functions. However, there are no studies to date that examine the effect of such use on peer interactions and the occurrence of prosocial behavior in peers. For parents, it has been found that when using digital media only few parents respond responsively to their children’s attempts at interaction and also very rarely, they communicate with them verbally and nonverbally. In the present study, we investigated how playing a game in a digital versus analog form influences interactions (especially prosocial behavior) of peers. We used an experimental situation, where 24 dyads of 4-10-year-old children were examined. Each of the dyads was randomly assigned to a condition where they played either a digital or analog game together. Various interaction parameters and prosocial behavior during and after the game were analyzed. Results show that children in the analog condition communicated verbally with each other more often, responded more often to interaction attempts of their partners and showed less often negative forms of interaction and more often positive forms of interaction than children in the digital condition. However, the type of medium had no influence on prosocial behavior after the game situation. These results suggest that the format of a game (digital vs. analog) has a decisive influence on peer interactions concerning their communication during but not their prosocial behavior after the game situation. Y1 - 2022 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-fhpotsdam/frontdoor/index/index/docId/2787 SN - 2451-9588 VL - 6 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER -