Teen dating violence is the physical, sexual, or psychological/emotional violence in a dating relationship. Although the label 'teen dating violence' implies that it only applies to teenagers it also encompasses tweens (11 and 12 year olds) as well as young adults in their early twenties.

The majority of the video games on JAGga.me focus on teen dating violence and come from an annual video game design contest sponsored by Jennifer Ann's Group, the sponsor of JAGga.me. The Life.Love. Game Design Challenge has been rewarding video game developers for producing video games about teen dating violence since 2008.

Video games have been shown to be effective in changing attitudes about abusive behavior, increasing knowledge of dating violence, and increasing awareness of teen dating violence. "'It's like you're actually playing as yourself': Development and Preliminary evaluation of 'Green Acres High', a serious game-based primary intervention to combat adolescent dating violence" from CAVA shares their success in using a video game to change attitudes about abusive behavior in the UK, Sweden, Germany, and Belgium.

Changing attitudes about teen dating violence and increasing awareness is critical to preventing future abuse. Teen dating violence has been shown to be linked to a number of unhealthy behaviors including:

• increased alcohol and drug use
• increased teeenager preganancies
• dropping out of school
• greatly increased chance of being in an abusive relationship as an adult.

You can read more about Jennifer Ann's Group use of video games to prevent dating violence in the journal article written by Jennifer Ann's Group Executive Director "Gaming Against Violence: A Grassroots Approach to Teen Dating Violence" (subscription) in the August 2014 issue of Games for Health Journal.

Jennifer Ann's Group has conducted its own research (2016) into the effectiveness of five of their games. The findings show that the majority of participants demonstrated a positive change in attitude about negative relationship beliefs in only 20 - 45 minutes. Gaming Against Violence: An Exploratory Evaluation Through Mechanical Turk of the Efficacy of Persuasive Digital Games in Improving Unhealthy Relationship Attitudes.

Third party research with two of Jennifer Ann's Group's games confirm this positive impact on attitudes of game players in the Netherlands. Playing to Win Over: Validating Persuasive Games (Chapter 6 - Playing Against Abuse: Effects of Procedural and Narrative Persuasive Games).

References

Crecente, D., & Jacobs, R. S. (2017). Gaming Against Violence: An Exploratory Evaluation Through Mechanical Turk of the Efficacy of Persuasive Digital Games in Improving Unhealthy Relationship Attitudes. In J. Dias, P. A. Santos, & R. C. Veltkamp (Eds.), Games and Learning Alliance Conference: 6th International Conference, GALA 2017, Lisbon, Portugal, December 5–7, 2017, Proceedings (pp. 259-262). (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Vol. 10653). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71940-5

Jacobs, R.S. (2017, November 10). Playing to win over: validating persuasive games. Erasmus University Rotterdam. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1765/102769

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