Beyond Screen Time: Aesthetics of Digital Playscapes for Young Children

Abstract

In this chapter, I consider the aesthetics of digital playscapes for young children. I make an effort to move beyond the concept of ‘screen time,’ from two perspectives. First, I position the current concept of ‘screen time’ in relationship to historical media panics. These include those of the late twentieth century that focused on the sickening powers of television programming for children. Here, the American Academy of Pediatrics’ first reversal in August 2015 (American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Communications and Media. (2016). Media and young minds. Pediatrics, 138(5), e20162591. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2016-2591.) of its earlier recommendation on screen time is of note. Second, I consider digital playscapes for young children from the perspective of new media art. As new media, young children’s use of digital technologies has both potentials and constraints. In this way, I share documentation from research with children using new media to illustrate that young children play with new media as they play with the traditional media forms with which childhood is typically associated (e.g., blocks, the sandbox, crayons, paint, clay, and ‘loose parts’). Beyond this, young children’s use of new media offers novel possibilities that are not always accessible through traditional art media. Such capacities form the cornerstone of a consideration of the aesthetic potentials of digital playscapes.