By Bess Naughtin
We recently surveyed thousands of Australian primary school students, including hundreds from Melbourne’s inner west, asking which features of apps or games are most powerful in keeping you hooked? The options included leaderboards, random drops (or loot boxes), streaks, autoplay, and notifications.
Before we share the verdict, here’s a quick snapshot of what these features are:
Leaderboards – A digital scoreboard that dares you to beat your friends (and yourself) in games like Fortnite, Roblox, and Mario Kart.
Random Drops (or Loot Boxes) – A lucky dip for gamers, with surprise rewards in games like FC25 Ultimate Team, Rocket League and Roblox that might be epic… or a total dud. Kind of like the pokies…. but for children.
Streaks – A counter that encourages daily participation, commonly used in apps or games like Wordle, Snapchat or Duolingo. Many Roblox experiences take this to another level by rewarding children with in-game currency.
Autoplay – A sneaky feature on YouTube and Netflix that starts the next video before you can even think about stopping.
Notifications – Those little buzzes and pop-ups from Instagram, Discord, and Roblox that pull you back in, no matter what you were doing.
Which feature is the most powerful, according to the Year 5s and 6s we surveyed? A dead heat between notifications and streaks.
Notifications, those little pings, banners and buzzes, are designed to capture our attention. They pull us away from whatever we’re doing and replace our focus with a drip-feed of dopamine. Streaks meanwhile, turn social connection into a high-pressure scoreboard. Miss a day and you “break” your streak, a loss many kids find genuinely stressful.
These features aren’t accidental. They’re the product of careful design, drawing on behavioural psychology to keep users coming back. Infinite scroll, autoplay, leaderboards, rewards, and random drops all work the same way, they make it harder to put the device down, even when we want to.
This isn’t a call to ban technology, we just need to be aware of how digital products are built, and to teach kids the skills to spot and manage these hooks.
The current free-to-play model will keep driving Big Tech to maximise users’ time spent online. With this understanding, our best chance to build healthier digital habits is to create awareness around these addictive features. Schools and parents have an opportunity to open up conversations, which empower kids to think more critically about the apps and games that consume so much of their time and attention.
Bess Naughtin is a local primary school teacher, parent, and member of the Inform & Empower team. Inform & Empower is a Trusted eSafety Provider based in Footscray who partner with over 250 primary schools around Australia.
