<p>Integrating digital games into learning about digital citizenship has garnered significant attention. While digital game-based learning has the potential to enhance learners’ academic performance, engagement, and motivation, these games often focus on specific aspects of digital citizenship education and lack systematic design approaches. Furthermore, current game designs are predominantly influenced by behaviorist learning theories, which enhance learning through stimulus reinforcement. However, there remains a gap in providing learners with an autonomously constructive and actively engaging learning environment that fosters meaningful learning. This study, guided by social cognitive theory, designs and develops an educational game system for digital citizenship. It also explores the impact of this digital game on middle school students’ digital citizenship learning achievements and their perceptions of learning motivation and cognitive load during the learning process. Additionally, lag sequential analysis is employed to identify differences in behavioral patterns between high-progress and low-progress groups in game-based learning. A total of 80 first-year middle school students participated in this study. The experimental group engaged in digital citizenship education through the digital game, while the control group learned through regular class-themed courses. The results indicate that gamified digital citizenship education positively influences students’ learning achievements, reduces cognitive load, and benefits students with initially low learning motivation. Differences in behavioral patterns between high-progress and low-progress groups during game participation were observed. Based on these findings, the study offers several recommendations and measures for educators and researchers in this field.</p>