Digital Play vs. Natural Play

There's enough research to support the fact that play alone has a very important role in childhood development. But the studies into the effect of digital play in the children's lives is just beginning. Some argue that digital gaming inhibits a child's natural "spontaneous play" because the child is being guided by the software as opposed to their own play intuition or imagination.

Susan Linn, an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and co-founder and director of the national coalition Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, asserts that digital technology in early childhood education is stealing children's freedom of expression and creativity in play. “We don’t seem to be thinking developmentally,” she said in a recent Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning article. “With screen media you get everything, you get the voice, what the characters look like, you get how they move.

“In order to create your own story, you have to have an imagination and the experience that comes from conjuring something out of nothing, or transforming an inert object into something alive,” added Linn, offering playing in the dirt or playing dress-up as examples. “We need to be ensuring that babies and toddlers and preschoolers have the time, the space, the silence and the inspiration to engage in creative play.” (Jackson, 2011)

A study by Vereinkina and Kervin highlighted the pivotal role of the collaborative family effort in supporting imaginative play through digital gaming. "It demonstrated the importance of informed choices that need to be made in selecting the digital applications, which provide the pre-schoolers with the opportunity of active and sustained engagement in imaginative play." (p. 17)

The children in the Vereinkina and Kervin study preferred games which fostered their imagination. For instance, the children became more engaged with an iPad app called "Puppet Pals" than many other games presented to them. Puppet Pals allowed the children to use their imagination to create a puppet character and develop an interactive and individual story around it, supported by technical features such as voice recordings.

"The children preferred the games which allowed them to engage their imagination and develop their own play that extended beyond the screen as digital play blended in the variety of children's other play contexts While the findings of the study cannot be generalized, they represent some positive experiences of the preschoolers' digitally mediated imaginative play with the iPad. The study highlighted the pivotal role of parents and caregivers in supporting such play. It demonstrated the importance of informed choices that need to be made in selecting the "digital applications, which provide the pre-schoolers with the opportunity of active and sustained engagement in imaginative play." (Vereinkina and Kervin, 2011)