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Digital Play for a Sustainable Future: Engaging Preschoolers with Beach Littering Awareness Through Mobile Game Intervention
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A study of 115 six-year-olds in Malaysia found that a simple mobile game teaching kids about beach cleanup dramatically boosted their awareness of ocean litter compared to kids who didn't play it. This matters because beach pollution and plastic waste eventually break down into microplastics that contaminate our food and water—so starting environmental education early, even through screen time, could help raise a generation that's more likely to protect the ecosystems we all depend on for clean water and healthy seafood.
Beach ecosystems are important to biodiversity, tourism and coastal livelihoods yet are also facing the growing threat of plastic pollution and marine litter. Although the world has been working towards ensuring sustainability, young children especially the preschoolers are a group that is not fully addressed in terms of environmental education. The research focuses on examining how gamified mobile learning can be effective in teaching preschoolers about the sustainability of the beach at Langkawi, Malaysia, a UNESCO Global Geopark that is going through serious beach littering challenges. The goal of the study is (i) to determine the level of knowledge that preschoolers had about beach littering, (ii) improve it using a mobile game intervention, and (iii) measure the effect of the interventions. A total of 115 six-year-old were randomly divided into control and experimental groups, and pre- and post-intervention data were measured by the means of guided questions. The experimental condition involved interaction with an application called Clean My Beach, which is a mobile game that simulates responsible clean-up behaviour on the beach. The post intervention results indicated that there was much greater awareness of the experimental group (M = 4.67) than the control group (M = 1.58) with a significant difference (p < 0.001). The paper also shows how digital resource, such as mobile game, can encourage early digital literacy, which forms the basis of future technological skills. The results confirm that age-based gamified technologies can be used to effectively teach early sustainability education that can provide a scalable and economically viable ways to inculcate pro-environmental ideals at a young age. The paper is connected with SDGs 4 (Quality Education), 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and 14 (Life Below Water) and shows the importance of digital innovations, parental involvement, and early intervention in creating environmentally responsible future generations.
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