Play, Imagination and Creativity in the 2020s: Part 2

What play, imagination, and creativity look like in the 2020s

Play

The good news is that children still play. There is something so beautiful about seeing them play in the real world as opposed to through a screen. As inherently social beings, children who are not taught to play with technology, will naturally seek out interaction with others or create their own form of play alone. In my experience, I have seen that children will happily play when left to their own devices and don't seem to be experiencing much lack in that.

Oftentimes though they may exhibit something they have seen on a screen somewhere, as Bandura shows us, so this does not mean that they're living lives completely without technology, just that their lives are still rich without it.

It warms my heart when I see children playing games that I used to play as a child and then being reminded by my mother that she herself used to play some of those games. There is something timeless about the games we play in real life. Something that can be transmitted across generations in a way that digital games cannot be.

Even the highly relational nature of playing in the real world has consequences that the online world doesn't. For example, working through conflict in the real world has real life consequences, rather than online ones. Children learn real skills from how they see and experience other people's genuine feelings in the moment.

Nowadays, children will often play until a device is brought into the space, then many children will have their attention taken by that. And it's very difficult for them to take their attention off of it or see the real world as more appealing than what they see on the screen. Some children may even be at a point where they refuse to play and ask from the get-go to play with a device.

Imagination and Creativity

In this area, there are games where children can paint and build without the hassle of messing up or buying many resources. This can be so wonderfully entertaining, but even then a child is still missing out. They miss out on the tactile nature of the paint, what it looks and smells like. Sensory experiences, especially smells are powerful elements of a child's learning experience and memories. Something about interacting with real things in the real world stimulates children's imagination and creativity.

Remember the stages of cognitive development Piaget introduced us to that children go through? They need to be able to interact with objects in real-time in the physical, 3-dimensional world for their minds to be able to properly grasp these concepts of how things work in the world. Children live in the real world, not the online world. So proficiency in the online world will not automatically translate into proficiency in the real world. This is so important to understand.

In an article I read a while back, a researcher said that if a very young child is taught to build a tower with blocks on a screen-based game, they'll get the hang of building that tower on the game. You might think that the child has now learned to build with blocks with much less hassle, right?

But no, if you introduce exactly the same kinds of blocks in the real world and ask them to build a simple tower, they will have to start from scratch, learning how to do this and making all the same mistakes they would've made in the first place, it will be as though they never learned in the first place.

Why? Probably because the real-world functions very differently to the online world. in the online world they may just need to click and drag their finger, whereas in real life, they need to learn how to grip correctly, the force they need to exert, they need to figure out why some blocks can or can't connect to, or balance on top of, others, which an screen-based activity cannot give them.

So, essentially, a child who is taught to play, create, imagine primarily through a screen will likely miss out more than those who learn in the real world in the long run.

In the digital world, so many of the answers and solutions are either handed to children, or unattainable in a frustrating way. So either it's too easy such that they don't learn necessary resilience or problem-solving, or it's so difficult that children give up. This why even schools which have almost exclusively digital classrooms still rely on human beings to provide that support for children and guidance when they get stuck.

Some merit to technology

It's not all bad though. Technology can have some benefits for play. For example, sometimes it helps to include children in play, creativity and imagination who might not have been able to due to some form of disability. Online, children may have access to a larger library of books and information and ideas which can trigger their imagination to create.

Additionally, Children can learn so much about the world and people through the digital space that they probably couldn't if they did not engage with technology. I myself, have learnt a lot through watching documentaries and educational videos. I find, however, that that knowledge becomes more cemented in my mind when I share it with somebody.

Consequences of technology for play, imagination, creativity, and development

Now, while the claim that children do not play at all is a bit of an exaggeration, I believe that there is a definite need to ring some alarm bells. This is an issue that is important to address since play, creativity, and imagination are a vital part of childhood and child development as we've been discussing throughout this Issue.

When play, imagination and creativity move to an almost exclusively digital space, children lose out on a lot of developmental benefits. With the general decline in play, imagination and creativity comes the loss of the value and innocence of childhood. This is not me being idealistic, but stating a fact.

Too often do I see children embodying teenage or adult roles prematurely because they are influenced by the online world or it is encouraged by peers who have been overexposed to the online world. This happens more in wealthier countries than probably the global south, but we have not missed out on it's impacts. We're seeing this, just not as bad as the wealthier countries. But we should consider how it will impact us.

This has countless repercussions for their overall development because they may be handling social and cognitive loads far beyond their developmental stage. This causes more harm than good in their overall wellbeing as they grow.

Even though social media and its influencers are not directly related to play, I have noticed that being connected online where kids can access these kinds of influences has become synonymous with play and there are social pressures to be connected and participate in the online world more than real world.

When the value of playing, imagining and creating is not valued and encouraged by caregivers, children will not value it much either when there are other things competing for their attention. It may be often said that the children of this day are just different and not interested in things, or that this is a natural change in the world, but this goes far beyond whether children play in the mud, it has implications for their development. There is nothing "cool" about abandoning childhood, and the consequences of these things are probably worse than we think.

We see that more and more children play in an isolated way and struggle to resolve conflicts or behave in socially acceptable ways. Additionally, the content consumed on screens is not often regulated by parents, and they could be transmitting values and beliefs that are not good for the child.

Like I outlined in the developmental benefits of play in Part 2 and of imagination and creativity in Part 3, where these things are not supported, children lose all these benefits. They lose the ability and will to problem-solve, their physical development is affected, their social skills are hindered, their mental health is jeopardised, and they are set up for failure.

What these kids are losing out on

It can be easy to look at the past with idealistic vision thinking that everything was easier and better back then. Often, that is not true, but there are biological and developmental realities to certain environmental changes, like I discussed in Issue 2.

Cultural values

Culture often gets passed down through play, as I mentioned earlier. However, in our increasingly homogenised world, culture and its nuances which shape how children think (as Vygotsky discussed) gets washed out. Individuality also gets washed out as a result.

Sitting in the moment

Remember how as a child you could be completely fascinated by something as simple as an ant hard at work for hours. Such things, even if you didn’t know it, were teaching you self-motivated and self-directed focus, self-control, stillness, even patience. Now, however, children’s focus and attention spans have become shorter and shorter.

It is not the children’s fault because their biology hasn’t really changed, they are still developing the same way. It is the fault of the adults allowing their impressionable minds to be influenced. Epigenetics shows us that if we do not change, future generations will develop differently

Opportunities to imagine and create

The issue with being glued to a screen is that play, imagination, and creativity are not often nurtured through watching a screen because whatever they see on the screen exists within the confines of someone else’s imagination, not their own. Yes, it can trigger their imagination, but it does not exercise that ability to focus and labour and think.

It does not often prompt them to go out an imagine or create, rather to just keep watching. They don’t have to go through the mental labour of thinking original thoughts and coming up with solutions through trial and error when all the answers are already there for them. And the reward of succeeding over a meaningful challenge gets lost.

The younger the child is, the more risky the introduction of technology in their play is. It is not always the same for their development because it cannot be used as a replacement.

Meaningful social interaction

Too often do I see literal babies more engrossed by shows like Bluey or Cocomelon than an interaction with their caregivers. This is a huge problem because humans are created to be social creatures and isolation and feelings of loneliness have a huge impact on our physical and psycho-emotional wellbeing. We thrive and grow on interaction (Issue 5). When a child is socialised through videos, games, and social media, there is a lot of learning and interaction that they miss out on.

In addition, this increases feelings of loneliness and there are many developmental and psychological consequences to this, something we can assume based on studies of children who grew up in isolation. More and more social lives are built online with computers and more social conflicts are navigated online, rather than in person. Similarly, bullying, depression and anxieties are being discussed more with google than with real people.

The Takeaway

Despite all its benefits, technology will always fall short of real life.

It is so important to understand that technology is not a salvation, the benefits of it are not nearly as great as we initially assumed, and we are seeing a rush of schools going back to technology-free environments, with much better results.

I do not believe that the solution is to just throw away technology completely, but children who play, imagine, create, and learn without the aid of technology probably won’t be life-changingly disadvantaged compared to those who have these things.

Remember that children are intense, perpetual learners. It matters how they are taught to interact with the world, and play, imagination, and creativity are key elements in that. The lessons they learn (especially the younger they are), the more these things will stick with them. Let's make sure we're teaching them the right, most natural way, to interact with the world.

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