Serious games supporting the prevention and treatment of alcohol and drugs consumption in youth: a systematic review (Preprint)

Abstract

The consumption of alcohol and drugs, particularly in adolescents and young adults, has increased worldwide in the last years, representing a significant public health challenge. Serious games have the potential to support preventive and treatment interventions for substance use, facilitating the acquisition of relevant knowledge and the motivation of changes in attitudes and behaviours towards substance consumption.

This systematic review aims to identify a set of main characteristics and reported results of current serious games addressed to support the prevention and treatment of alcohol and drugs consumption in adolescents and young adults.

The systematic review was performed following the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines. Original articles were identified, including serious games designed to support the prevention and treatment of alcohol and drugs consumption in adolescents and young adults. Data were retrieved from 2010 to 2021 using PubMed, Scopus (Elsevier), IEEE and ACM Digital as data sources. Authors individually screened the titles and abstracts and then full articles to obtain papers that met inclusion criteria.

A total of 558 records were obtained. After removing duplicates and analysing the inclusion criteria, 27 papers were fully reviewed. The information extracted from each paper included the type of substance addressed (alcohol and other drugs) by the serious game; the supported type of intervention (prevention or treatment); their theoretical or therapeutic roots; the computational techniques implemented in their development; the type of evaluation protocol and the reported results of the serious games.

There is an increment in the development of serious games for the prevention/treatment of substance use in comparison to previous similar reviews. Most of the identified serious games reported positive results from pilot studies, quasi-experimental studies and randomised control trials. Nevertheless, more studies are necessary to identify the long-term effects of these serious games and what specific game mechanics are more useful for preventive or treatment interventions.