Objectives This study explored the current state of social perception of play counseling through big data analysis. This study tried to understand how play counseling is socially understood and what strategies are needed for the development of play counseling.
 Methods Texts such as various blogs, cafes, news, and web documents were collected from five platforms: Naver, Daum, Google, You Tube, and Twitter, with “play+counseling’ as the keyword. The analysis target was limited to the data of the last three years from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2022. For data analysis, key word frequency analysis, TF-IDF analysis, semantic network analysis, and CONCOR analysis were applied.
 Results As the result of frequency analysis and TF-IDF analysis, ‘children’, ‘play’, ‘counseling’, ‘research’, ‘effect’, and ‘expert’ appeared as the top keywords of play counseling. As a result of semantic network analysis, the keyword with the strongest influence was ‘children’. As a result of the CONCOR analysis, the keywords for play counseling formed five clusters. These were named ‘goals and effects of play counseling’, ‘program elements of play counseling’, ‘certification of play psychological counselors’, ‘teacher training for play counseling’, and ‘elementary school’.
 Conclusions The perception of play counseling, which is mainly concentrated in elementary school, should be expanded to middle and high school students. Play counseling should be used to cultivate sociality and positive emotions in Korean children and adolescents.