Education in the post-digital society in which we live, where people are continuously participating in the cyberspace, needs to adapt to those vehicles of interaction, continuous feedback and visual activities. That is why it is increasingly common to use gamification strategies for social awareness. Specifically, we find many educational experiences where gamification is a resource applied to raise awareness about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through various tools related to participation. In fact, it is common to organize workshops called GAME SDGs with the aim of promoting the knowledge and social engagement of citizens and their applicability to everyday life [1].

Since September 2015, when the United Nations General Assembly accepted the 2030 Development Agenda where the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their corresponding 169 associated targets were defined, we have been considering the need to act to improve social and personal habits. In fact, the 17 SDGs were born to change the way we live and aim to create in 2030 a sustainable future [2].

This topic is of great interest to the scientific community. Kumazawa [3] conducted a study on the general research trends in gamification within the fields of sustainability. For this purpose, he classified the scientific articles found, both original and review articles, from the perspective of the Sustainable Development Goals. In his studies, the various research approaches that incorporate a gamification mentality within the scientific literature on sustainability issues become evident. One of the great contributions of this author is the clarification of the types of gamification approach through the in-depth study of 21 articles.

Governments, in general, and their educational policies, in particular, react by trying to strengthen the social commitment of citizens to the SDGs through formal education. Thus, the culture of participation and the principle of intercreativity together with gamified strategies are beginning to be seen as an ally of social awareness [4]. We highlight the research by Sachs and his collaborators (2019) on the SDGs and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Their results demand profound transformations in all countries that will require the collaboration of civil society, science and business with governments and, to implement the actions in the 17 SDGs, they propose a concrete agenda and the creation of six blocks, where the achievements of all the SDGs are grouped: (1) education, gender and inequality; (2) health, well-being and demographics; (3) energy decarbonization and sustainable industry; (4) sustainable food, land, water and oceans; (5) sustainable cities and communities; and (6) digital revolution for sustainable development. Agreed actions between government and civil institutions will call for priority investments and regulatory challenges for each block (Sachs et al., 2019).

It is also important to consider the research of Nilson et al. (2018), who argue that understanding the interactions between the SDGs themselves, both negative (trade-offs) and positive (co-benefits), is critical to advancing the action on the SDGs [5]. These authors propose a new conceptual framework for mapping and assessing the interactions between the SDGs, bringing specific experiences and knowledge on the subject. Their findings show that the interactions between the SDGs depend on issues such as geographical context, resource endowment, time horizon and governance in each country.

More than ever, it is necessary, in the post-truth society [6], to empower citizens and help them acquire the necessary media skills to access, understand, analyze, evaluate and produce content as well as to discriminate between real and fake news [7]. In this sense, Kahne and Bowyer point out that those students taking courses on media literacy increase their ability to understand, assess and analyze media messages [8]. Along these lines, institutions such as Ithaca College created innovative projects such as Project Look Sharp (https://www.projectlooksharp.org/#, URL (accessed on 1 February 2023) to develop and provide training, content, materials and support for integrating media literacy at all educational levels. Further initiatives, such as the News Literacy Project (https://newslit.org/ URL (accessed on 1 February 2023) are working with educators and journalists on teaching young people to discern fact from fiction in the digital age.

The applicability of MIL tools and strategies to combat fake news is essential, in order for citizens to learn the proper use of technology in order to identify fake news and thus eradicate it [9]. It is, therefore, important to carry out educommunicative projects, such as BotBusters, comprising both digital literacy that allows for verifying and contrasting the information to which citizens have access, and learning skills for critical and reflexive analysis when receiving and sharing information [9].

Much research has also been conducted on gamification and education, in general, and the results of integrating gamification and ODS processes in education are proving to be very promising, manifesting an increase in the motivation, engagement and participation rates of participants in the educational process. However, studies by Lusseau and Manciny [2] show reservations in this regard. After critically reviewing the scientific literature concerning gamification and its relationship with motivation and engagement, these authors conclude that this relationship is still limited on multiple levels, as there is still a large gap between theory and practice. On the contrary, there are other dissenting voices, such as Alsawaier [10], who claim that the use of gamification could provide a partial solution to the decline in student motivation and engagement faced by the school system today. The university environment could benefit greatly from gamification not only in its graduate recruitment strategies, but also in the content of university courses and curricula.

From the educational, communication and governmental spheres, practices to raise awareness of the SDGs through the use of gamification are highly considered in media and informational literacy (MIL) actions. It brings together contributions from 25 European media literacy experts from academic, policy and regulatory institutions on the state and future directions of media literacy research and policy in Europe. The recommendations of this document marked a breakthrough in the field, and gamification and SDGs have a perfect fit.

With the practical methodology of the game and the use of digital technologies, the aim is to motivate and encourage the participation and involvement of students to initiate this lifestyle change [1,4]. However, Wu et al. [11] conducted a literature review on the research conducted on the roles and opportunities of digital technologies in achieving the SDGs, identifying gaps in this research at the social, economic and environmental levels of sustainable development [11]. These authors suggest the essential and urgent need to raise awareness and draw attention to how to innovate and energize the use of technologies to better help all nations achieve the SDGs by 2030.

MIL insists on a non-instrumentalist approach to digital education, i.e., going beyond a binary view of digital media. It is necessary to analyze the risks and opportunities for citizens in order for them to acquire the digital skills and the level of social awareness they need [12,13]. This author proposes a broader and more critical approach, where the emergence of “digital capitalism” and the ubiquity of digital media in everyday life, including gamified strategies, should be contemplated within media education for life. In this sense, the (R)evolutiON Project of the University of Granada in Spain is a good example of good practices [14], whose backbone was the SDGs and fictional narratives within a gamified proposal for action. Its main elements were missions, feedback, scores, badges, etc., which were integrated for the joint construction of the knowledge of its participants under a Game-Based Learning (GBL) methodology. In the field of social sciences, and specifically in the field of geography, we can highlight a transversal learning gamification experience based on challenges with ODS [15]. Their results show us how students have improved their knowledge about the SDGs, have detected interesting direct and indirect links between the contents of geography and the SDGs and believe that this methodology has helped them to know what the SDGs are.

The onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on sustainable learning in education, forcing schools to include innovative and flexible learning approaches such as flipped classrooms [16]. Gamification has become a new technopedagogy that has been integrated into flipped classrooms to promote student achievement and engagement. The results of these authors’ study indicated that traditional gamified classrooms promote student achievement, and gamified flipped classrooms promote student engagement, on the one hand, and that the learning culture, such as teacher dependency, also influences student achievement and engagement [16]. They conclude that both gamified flipped classrooms and traditional gamified classrooms support sustainable learning in education, even during times of academic uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, Park and Kim (2021) also investigated in the same confinement period the effect of gamified virtual learning on 140 elementary and middle school students. In their findings, they concur that gamification in online learning has a positive impact on learner motivation and the understanding of educational content [17].

Finally, it is worth highlighting the research on the co-design of an educational video game aimed at promoting good eating habits in young people and promoting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as SDG 3 (good health and well-being), SDG 10 (reducing inequalities) and SDG 17 (partnerships for the goals). For this research, three workshops with different gamification strategies were implemented to support a “participatory design” process [18].

There are very successful examples of gamification strategies being used to help students develop competences to fight fake news [19,20,21,22,23] but very few that have been used to simultaneously inoculate them with knowledge about the SDGs [24].

Fake news can negatively impact the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including Goal 4 which aims to provide inclusive, equitable and quality education [25]. Taking into account this international concern, BotBusters represents an innovative design that addresses this problem by combining both the functions of serious gamification and teaching the SDGs in the context of fake news, using a holistic methodology oriented to develop proactive social values among young people.

UNESCO considers that education for sustainable development should aim to empower and motivate young people to be sustainable and active citizens, able to think critically and participate in shaping a sustainable future [26]. Appropriate pedagogical approaches for sustainable development education should take into account the age of the target groups, as well as their contexts, preferences and interests [26]. Furthermore, education for sustainable development should aim at empowering young people to develop critical thinking that makes them question how they see and think about the world in order to better understand it [27,28].

Today’s youth has a key role to play in the implementation of the SDGs, not only as beneficiaries of the actions and policies of the 2030 Agenda, but also as active participants [29]. The youth population sees the need to raise awareness of the SDGs, as well as to translate their fundamental ideas into understandable language [30]. In this context, it is necessary to know what the educational needs of young people are about the SDGs.

The BotBusters tool was designed to improve the knowledge of young people, and the population in general, about the verification of fake news related to the SDGs. This allowed, on the one hand, their skills and knowledge on the evaluation and understanding of this content on social networks to be improved. At the same time, the dynamics of the game allowed us to know the preferences and knowledge of young people in the set of the SDGs and thus to compare their performance in the game, in a context in which they really had to demonstrate their knowledge and preferences, with the data obtained in other research or experiences.

The data published in the Flash 502 Eurobarometer [31] (p. 3) on the occasion of the European Year of Youth 2022 indicate as priority areas for young Europeans: physical and mental health, environmental protection, the fight against climate change and education and training [31]. In other words, the main concerns of young Europeans are related to SDG 3 (healthy living and promoting well-being), SDG 4 (inclusive, equitable and quality education), SDG 13 (take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts), SDG 14 (conserve oceans, seas and marine resources) and SDG 15 (protect, restore and promote the sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems).

These findings indicate that young people’s prior knowledge of the SDGs is more related to issues that concern them individually such as education, health and the environment. However, other SDGs more related to social issues and, more specifically, to critical thinking, are not reflected in the same way. Only this critical social awareness can lead to action, both individually and socially, and that step is the real challenge and reason for the SDGs. These type of data indicate that development education should holistically illustrate the SDGs through partnerships between institutions and organizations that open up new possibilities for learning and allow the target audience to benefit from the knowledge and experiences of the participating entities and, on the other hand, empower the participating institutions and thus increase their capacity as critical agents of change [26]. Therefore, it is necessary to propose educational activities that promote this holistic aspect, so that the education for sustainable development contributes to the achievement of the SDGs to the extent that it develops transversal competencies of critical thinking and social action. Only this can ensure sustainability, linking the SDGs together and providing practical tools and learning to address the societal challenges of the SDGs [26].