Gaming Is Social Infrastructure: From Abandoned Consoles to Community Assets
Digital inclusion is no longer a “nice to have”. It is core social infrastructure.
Across the UK, millions of functional digital devices—particularly gaming consoles—sit unused in homes. Recent data highlighted by Virgin Media O2 estimates that around 49 million consoles are currently abandoned or dormant. This represents not only significant economic value, but a far deeper social opportunity cost.
Through Empowering Futures, our work consistently shows that access to devices, data, and skills directly shapes outcomes across education, health, employment, and civic participation. When communities are digitally excluded, systems fail them quietly. When they are included, resilience follows.
The Hidden Cost of Unused Technology
The issue facing the UK is not a shortage of technology, but a failure of distribution and intent.
Usable devices sitting idle represent learners without tools, families unable to access essential services, and individuals excluded from digital life. This is not merely a consumer issue; it is a systems challenge. Without clear pathways for redistribution, technology accumulates where it is no longer needed and remains inaccessible where it is most required.
At IFB Gaming, we view unused technology as a latent public asset—one that, if mobilised correctly, can support learning, connection, wellbeing, and opportunity.
Why Market Solutions Alone Are Not Enough
High street organisations such as Cash Converters and CeX provide valuable routes for individuals to trade in or sell unwanted consoles. These models extend device lifecycles and offer short-term financial benefit.
However, they are not designed to address digital exclusion.
Commercial resale pathways are market-driven, not inclusion-driven. They do not reliably reach communities experiencing the greatest barriers to access, nor do they ensure devices are accompanied by connectivity, skills, safeguarding, or support. As a result, functional technology continues to sit unused, while exclusion persists.
This is why we welcome leadership from organisations such as Virgin Media O2 in reframing unused devices as a social value challenge, not simply a consumer one.
With a track record in digital inclusion—particularly through expanding access to connectivity via SIM card provision and data support (through the National Databank) —there is an opportunity to integrate device reuse into a broader, more inclusive model. When devices, connectivity, and skills are addressed together, digital inclusion moves from aspiration to impact.
Gaming, Neurodiversity, and Inclusive Learning
For many neurodivergent individuals and people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), gaming is far more than entertainment.
Game-based environments offer structure, clarity, autonomy, and immediate feedback—conditions that traditional systems often struggle to provide. Gaming can support regulation, communication, confidence, and problem-solving, and for many people acts as a primary gateway to digital engagement and skills development.
When access to gaming technology is removed, a critical pathway to learning and participation is also lost. Digital inclusion strategies that fail to recognise this risk excluding those who could benefit most.
IFB Gaming treats gaming as a legitimate, evidence-informed medium for inclusive learning, when paired with intentional design, safeguarding, and skills support.
The Gaming Paradigm: What Systems Can Learn
Gaming should be understood not merely as a sector, but as a paradigm.
Game design embeds principles that education, workforce development, health, and civic systems increasingly seek but rarely achieve: adaptive learning, user-centred design, safe failure, collaboration, progression, and motivation through purpose rather than compliance.
There is far more we can learn from gaming than we currently apply to policy and practice. IFB Gaming exists to bridge that gap—translating the strengths of the gaming paradigm into real-world pathways for inclusion, confidence, and capability.
Building Circular Pathways for Inclusion
True digital inclusion requires a circular approach—one that connects sustainability, device reuse, skills development, and community need into a single ecosystem.
This means moving beyond ad-hoc donations and isolated pilots toward long-term, cross-sector partnerships involving industry, local authorities, educators, and community organisations. Devices must be redistributed with intent, supported by training, connectivity, and safe spaces for use.
At IFB Gaming, our focus is on building these pathways—ensuring technology moves not just from owner to owner, but from underuse to impact, from excess to empowerment.
We invite you to work with IFB Gaming.
Together, we can ensure that unused technology becomes a catalyst for access, skills, and empowerment, rather than a symbol of missed opportunity.
Get involved. Partner with us. Help turn gaming into inclusive social infrastructure.
