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Child Safeguarding Statement
Some resources and activities may prompt a child to remember and potentially share an experience of harm. Make sure you’re familiar with your school's safeguarding policies and procedures so you can confidently report safety and well-being concerns.
Prepare students for the session by discussing: their right to be safe and respected; what to do if discussing online safety makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe; and how to seek help if they feel or have felt unsafe. Use this resource available on the website.
Tips & Resources
Supporting Safe Gaming Habits: A Guide for Primary Educators
Young people are connecting online through gaming — here's how to support them
Since December 2025, Australians under 16 have been restricted from holding accounts on major social media platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube. The restrictions were introduced to protect young people from harms linked to social media use, including exposure to harmful content, cyberbullying, addictive design features and online predators.
Platforms like Roblox, Minecraft, Steam and Discord aren't part of those restrictions, and for many young people they've become the go-to spaces for connecting with friends and meeting new people. Gaming can be a positive way to socialise, collaborate and build new skills. It's worth knowing that the list of regulated platforms is subject to ongoing review and could change, but for now these spaces offer real benefits alongside some features that are worth paying attention to, including contact from strangers, unmoderated chat and content that isn't always age-appropriate.
Your students are already building worlds, teaming up, and racing each other. That enthusiasm is something you can work with. This guide is designed to help you step into conversations about gaming with confidence. Not as a gaming expert, but as an educator who knows how to help young people make safe and respectful choices.
Key takeaways
You already have what you need. The skills you teach through SEL and health education are the same skills students need in gaming spaces.
You don't need to wait for a formal lesson. Gaming conversations that come up naturally are some of the most effective, and you're well placed to guide them.
Adapt your existing lessons. Slot gaming examples into what you're already running. Our eSmart lesson plan library has ready-made options if you need a starting point.
Communicate with parents early. Most families are navigating gaming at home without much support. A short note home builds trust and extends the learning beyond the classroom.
For a structured, whole-class approach, the eSmart Digital Licence is free, curriculum-aligned and designed for Foundation to Year 6.
You don't need to be a gaming expert to be a safety expert
If gaming feels like unfamiliar territory, you're not alone. One of the most common things we hear from primary educators is some version of: "I don't know anything about these games, so I can't talk about them."
Don't worry about them knowing more than you about the game itself. They will, and that's fine. Research from the Deadly Gaming project found that when educators stepped into gaming conversations, students felt empowered to share their knowledge of the digital world, and educators were able to guide those conversations toward meaningful learning outcomes.
The skills that matter are the ones you already teach every day: kindness, respect, empathy and knowing when to ask for help. These aren't new lessons. They're your existing lessons, applied to a space your students care about.
Individual games change constantly, but the principles of being safe online stay the same. You don't need to know what "obbies" are on Roblox or how Redstone works in Minecraft to help students think critically about how they behave online.
The eSmart Digital Licence
Content: what children see online
Contact: who they interact with
Conduct: how they behave
Compulsion: how they manage their screen time
These risks don't sit in isolation. A student spending more time in gaming spaces is more likely to encounter unwanted contact.
Understanding these connections helps you take a more complete approach to digital safety.
Gaming and esports: a quick explainer
Gaming platforms have become the social spaces many young people use most. For your students, these aren't just games. The conversations, friendships and conflicts that happen inside them are real to the children involved, even when the worlds are virtual.
Online multiplayer games allow players to play with or against other people in real time. Sometimes that's friends, sometimes it's strangers from anywhere in the world. Popular examples include Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite and Rocket League.
In-game social features are where the safety conversations become important. Many games include text or voice chat, the ability to add friends, virtual marketplaces where real money can be spent, and user-generated content that isn't always moderated.
Esports is organised, competitive gaming. At a school level, it might look like a weekly lunchtime Mario Kart tournament or a structured program where students play in teams and learn about sportsmanship and digital wellbeing along the way. School-based esports programs are growing across Australia, particularly in primary schools, and tend to attract students who may not connect with traditional sports
For a real example, see our companion piece: Esports in Action: How Silverton Primary School Built a Safe and Inclusive Gaming Program
Students from Silverton Primary School compete in a Mario Kart tournament
Bringing gaming into the classroom
For many students, gaming is the thing they're most motivated to talk about. That makes it a useful hook for lessons you're already running and a natural opening when students raise concerns.
Privacy and personal information
Online privacy is easier to teach when students can understand why it's important. Gaming gives you a concrete context. Ask students to think about the information they share in games: their username, their age, their school.
A useful framework is the "zones of privacy." Think of it as concentric circles. At the outer edge: "I'm from Australia." Move inward and the risk grows faster than expected. A school name, a suburb, a street: each detail can combine with others to make a child identifiable. The safest default is to stay at the outer edge.
The goal isn't to help students find the right answer to personal questions. It's to help them feel confident not answering at all. They don't owe anyone that information, and a good online friend won't push for it. If someone keeps asking, that's worth reporting via the eSafety Commissioner's reporting tool.
Try asking: "If someone in a game asks where you live, what would you do?" Let students work through the options: change the subject, ignore it, block, report.
Uncomfortable or unsafe contact
The best time to talk about uncomfortable contact is before it happens. Talk through what it looks and feels like when someone online makes you uncomfortable, and what the options are: mute, block, report, tell a trusted adult.
You can deepen this by asking students to think about who they play with. How do they know someone is who they say they are? What's the difference between a school friend on Minecraft and a stranger who joined their server? These questions work just as well as a planned lesson as they do in response to something a student raises.
Try asking: "If someone in a game says something that gives you a bad feeling, what would you do first? Who would you tell?"
Check out our ready-to-use Contact lesson plans, which a range of topics around safe online communication.
Lesson Plan Spotlight:
In this activity, students explore problems and decisions faced online. It encourages boundary-setting, respectful interactions, and assertiveness for online safety.
Screen time and healthy habits
Gaming is one of the most motivating contexts for conversations about balance and self-regulation. When does fun tip into too much? What does a good routine look like alongside homework, sleep and physical activity? Let students find their own answers. Given time to reflect, they may recognise that their screen habits might need more balance.
If a student seems tired or distracted, or mentions late nights gaming, explore what they notice about how they feel after a long session versus a shorter one. Over time, they will build awareness of what compulsive use feels like from the inside, not just setting rules from the outside.
Try asking: "How do you know when you've been playing too long? What does it feel like?"
Compulsion lesson plans from our eSmart Digital Licence program cover managing screen time and self-regulation.
Lesson Plan Spotlight:
This activity addresses issues related to technology use at school and home, promotes critical thinking about its emotional and social impact, develops self-regulation strategies, and cultivates communication skills such as active listening and empathy.
Esports can be a powerful tool for reaching disengaged students
Organised, competitive gaming is quietly growing in Australian primary schools. Esports tends to reach students who historically disengage from traditional sport and mainstream school activities. A weekly lunchtime session can be the thing that gets a reluctant student showing up and creating new friendships. Some schools run esports alongside PE, giving students who don't connect with physical sport an equivalent space to belong.
For students with disability, the benefits can be even more pronounced. Research from the eSafety Commissioner found that gaming's positive effects on social connection, confidence and enjoyment are stronger for young people with disability than for their peers. For students who may face barriers to participation in other social settings, gaming can provide valuable connection. These students can also face higher rates of bullying in gaming spaces, making the safety conversations in this guide especially relevant.
For rural and remote students, or those in boarding school, esports and gaming can provide peer connection and a sense of community that geography otherwise limits.
The curriculum alignment is also stronger than it might appear. A structured esports program can address content across PE (physical preparation, nutrition, rest), Health, Digital Technologies, and SEL. You don't have to treat it as extracurricular. It can sit within what you're already teaching.
If your school is thinking about a gaming club or esports program
If your school is exploring a more structured approach, the safety conversations above still apply. You'll also want to think about which games you're bringing into the school environment. A practical starting point is to keep it internal first: students play with each other before connecting with other schools. This keeps the safety variables manageable while students are finding their feet.
All games sold or distributed in Australia must carry a classification rating from the Australian Classification Board. For a school setting, G and PG rated games are your safest starting point.
Look for games where:
- Chat can be turned off or restricted
- Privacy settings let players control who contacts them
- Content is age-appropriate
- Multiplayer can be limited to known players
The eSafety Guide provides safety information for many popular games and apps. You can also watch a few minutes of gameplay on YouTube to get a quick sense of what a game looks and feels like in practice.
For a detailed look at how one Victorian primary school set up a safe and inclusive esports program, read our companion piece: Esports in Action: How Silverton Primary School Built a Safe and Inclusive Gaming Program
Getting parents on board
Most parents are navigating gaming at home already, often without much support. Research from the eSafety Commissioner found a clear disconnect between young people's gaming experiences and how their parents perceive them, and that young people want adults to understand why they enjoy it. Letting your parent community know that you're having these conversations at school can help bridge that gap and build trust.
Here's a paragraph you could adapt for your school newsletter or parent communication:
This term, we've been having classroom conversations about online safety, including how to stay safe while playing games online. Many of our students are active on platforms like Roblox and Minecraft, which include chat features and interaction with other players. We're not encouraging more screen time. We're helping students develop the skills to navigate these spaces safely and respectfully, building on the same principles of kindness and good decision-making that we teach every day.
If you'd like to continue these conversations at home, the eSafety Commissioner's guide for parents is a great place to start.
Resources referenced in this article
- The eSafety Guide — Look up specific apps, games and platforms to check their safety features and settings.
- eSmart Digital Licence — A free, curriculum-aligned program for building digital citizenship skills in learners aged 4–12. Supported by the Australian Government.
- eSmart Lesson Plans — Browse the full library, filterable by risk area (Content, Contact, Conduct, Compulsion) and year level.
- eSafety Commissioner — Classroom Resources — Curriculum-aligned activities on online safety topics including gaming, cyberbullying, privacy and respectful relationships.
- eSafety Commissioner — Professional Learning for Teachers — Free self-paced modules for primary educators, including a module on supporting safe and positive gaming experiences.
- Australian Classification Board — Look up classification ratings for computer games, including guidance on gambling-like content and in-game purchases.