The Story of Safety Snail and Her e-Mail: A Digital Wellness and Cybersecurity Serious Game for Pre-School Children

Abstract

Cyber threats are part of our everyday life. Even children are exposed to cyberspace as they are provided with electronic devices that have online connectivity. Due to their vulnerability and lack of education about cyber threats, there is a need to address their digital wellness. Digital wellness refers to one's complete well-being in cyberspace. This is a balance between one's mental and physical state when using different digital technologies. This is achieved by developing a serious game that incorporates educational and game elements appropriate to the targeted age group. The aim of this paper is to present aspects of this game, in which the story of "Safety Snail's e-mail" is used to address their digital wellness regarding e-mail related threats as an example of online interaction. The methods used were, designing and developing a serious game based on critical game elements from literature, and making use of a structured expert review to validate the game and elements thereof. The review indicated that the critical game elements as identified in literature were successfully used in the game. This research further contributes by identifying five additional game elements through analysis of the expert review feedback. It is shown in this paper how a serious game, using critical game elements and age appropriate stories, can address the digital wellness of pre-school children.