Families Playing Animal Crossing Together: Coping With Video Games During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic was stressful for everyone, particularly for families who had to supervise and support children, facilitate remote schooling, and manage work and home life. We consider how families coped with pandemic-related stress using the video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Combining a family coping framework with theorizing about media as a coping tool, this interview study of 27 families (33 parents and 37 children) found that parents and children individual coped with pandemic-related stress with media. Parents engaged in protective buffering of their children with media, taking on individual responsibility to cope with a collective problem. Families engaged in communal coping, whereby media helped the family cope with a collective problem, taking on shared ownership and responsibility. We provide evidence for video games as coping tools, but with the novel consideration of family coping with media.

"I need to just have a couple of White claws and play animal crossing tonight": Parents coping with video games during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic was an incredibly stressful time for parents of school-age children. Supervising remote schooling while also balancing work and life demands, in addition to health concerns, demanded much from parents. This study considers how parents used the video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons to cope with pandemic-related stress. Using Reinecke and Rieger's (2021) recovery and resilience in entertaining media use model as a theoretical framework, this interview study of 33 parents from 27 families found that parents psychologically detached from their pandemic-stress laden worlds with the game, used the game to relax, found a sense of accomplishment through achieving goals via mastery experiences in the game, and appreciated the sense of control that the game afforded. An emergent code was found in that the game facilitated much-needed social connections for parents, which was part of their pandemic-stress coping. This study provides further evidence for video games as coping tools, with a specific focus on parental pandemic stress. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) Impact Statement This interview study looks at how parents used the video game Animal Crossing: New Horizon to cope with COVID-19 pandemic-related stress. Parents used the game to detach, relax, find a sense of accomplishment and control as well as facilitate social connections. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)