The Room Beneath the Rafters

The Room Beneath the Rafters is an award winning video game about dating violence.

About teen dating violence
Research on using video games to prevent teen dating violence
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Thumbnail screenshot of The Room Beneath the Rafters video game

Screenshot of The Room Beneath the Rafters video game

Thumbnail screenshot of The Room Beneath the Rafters game about relationships.

Screenshot of The Room Beneath the Rafters game about relationships.

Thumbnail screenshot of The Room Beneath the Rafters game to stopTDV

Screenshot of The Room Beneath the Rafters, the 2016 award winning video game to prevent teen dating violence.

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Teen Dating Violence and video games

Teen dating violence is the physical, sexual, or psychological/emotional violence in a dating relationship. Although this problem is called 'teen dating violence' our focus is not just on teenagers but also on tweens (11 and 12 year olds) as well as young adults in their early twenties. This form of relationship violence is distinguished from people who are married or generally have greater experience in dating relationships. This disinction is important because people with relatively little dating experience will have greater difficulty knowing if some aspects of a relationship are "normal" or not.

Although physical or sexual abuse in a dating relationship is fairly easy to define and identify, other forms of abuse like emotional or psychological abuse are not as easy to explain because they depend a great deal on context. This nuanced aspect of dating abuse is one aspect of what makes it difficult to teach young people about what is - and what isn't - healthy or acceptable. However, this contextual component is also what makes our use of video games an ideal solution.

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.

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.

Teen girls are six times more likely to become pregnant.

Greater chance of eating disorders, self harm, and suicidal ideation.
Dropping out of school.

Greatly increased chance of being in an abusive relationship as an adult, contributing to a cycle of domestic violence.

Jennifer Ann's Group produces video games as an effective tool to prevent dating violence through awareness, education, and advocacy. To learn more about the history of Jennifer Ann's Group's and its other programs designed to prevent teen dating violence visit JenniferAnn.org.

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Research on the Prevention of Teen Dating Violence through Video Games

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.

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 also conducted its own research (2016) into the effectiveness of their games. Their findings show that the majority of participants showed a change in attitude about negative relationship beliefs in only 20 - 45 minutes. This research has not yet been published but once it is this will be updated with a link to the publication. Please sign up to be notified of this and other items of interest regarding the efforts of Jennifer Ann's Group.

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