> YouGov and ESA conducted a 5-minute online survey in the U.S. from September 26-30, 2025 among 1,912 respondents ages 5-65 recruited from YouGov’s proprietary online panel. Data is weighted to be representative of the overall U.S. population in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, education and census region. Respondents ages 5 to 17 were asked to complete the survey under the supervision of a parent.

The ESA represents the profitability of gaming. I wouldn’t believe a single thing they polled, regardless of who they used to do it. Polls are rarely unbiased, sooo….. We will have to agree to disagree

I think it's a little different. With new games comes novelty. Sticking with a single game and just buying cosmetics doesn't provide nearly as much novelty. I don't think this is a children only issue either. Its a trap adults fall into as well.

And why does this "novelty" matter if what they spent money on got them the same amount of fun?

Not sure why novelty is in quotes, it's a quantifiable measurement based on differences. Anyway, novelty has shown to have a wide range of mental benefits. [This](https://seattleanxiety.com/psychiatrist/2022/7/21/novelty) is a pretty good overview, and if you want to dig into specific papers they're listed as well. Even if you want to ignore any potential benefits of novelty, generally when you have a new experience for the first time, you will have more fun that you typically do. The downside is some new experiences may not be fun, but that's very low risk in the context of gaming.

Currencies often unlock completely new content and the fact that you might not like a new game could cancel out the potential to have a slightly better time. Ultimately, how you spend gaming money is up to you.

I would say the vast majority of micro transactions are cosmetic or time unlocking. Not adding much novelty. Also the context of this post is about gifting kids on Christmas, so no, not necessarily "up to you". I guess there's an argument to just give kids whatever they want, but I don't think think that leads to the best development outcomes. You can't force kids to do anything either, but there does exist a middle ground.

What did you do?

I explained how it works, that it's just artificial scarcity, with vark patterns like FOMO, that they'll lose it all on day (when switching game for example or the game stops existing), but also that for a small game it could help the creator (they loved a sand digging game and bought a better shovel lol) etc. I also put the money in perspective , like remember that candy we bought, it was 5€, are you sure you want to buy a skin for 8€ (they did)? But I didn't outright forbid them to do so, they got to chose and they were quite happy about it. I very rarely gave them anything (maybe 20-30€ during like 3 years) but they hit the gramps and eventually the house of cards went down and they were outraged that all their skins and "rare skins" were just useless now. They got a single skin for the next shooter IIRC so to not have the newbie skin, but then it just stopped.