Looking for “loose parts” in children’s digital play

by | Mar 1, 2023

Like many households during the pandemic, the number of cardboard boxes in our apartment increased greatly. My son, Oliver, and I were living in Berlin at the time. We had a door jamb that ostensibly propped open the door between the entryway and the rest of our apartment. In reality, the door stayed open on its own. Or at least it did until I started stacking flattened cardboard boxes behind it. Suddenly, the door jam became indispensable. 

For Oliver, these boxes frequently proved to be just as engaging, and often more engaging, than the contents inside. 

We laid them on the floor to catch paint splatters during art projects. Sometimes they became part of the art project, like the time Oliver dipped his race cars and trucks in paint and used their treads to create patterns on his cardboard canvas. 

Oliver built forts for himself and kennels for his toy dogs. One time he took a box and drew a TV screen on it, then cut holes for his arms so he could wear his TV as a costume. Sometimes he’d simply crawl inside a big box and delight in being hidden from view. 

In my book Technology’s Child, I discuss the value of playing with “loose parts” like cardboard boxes. The concept comes from the late sculpture professor Simon Nicholson,1Nicholson, S. (1971). How not to cheat children, the theory of loose parts. Landscape Architecture, 62(1), 30–34. and I first encountered it in Alexandra Lange’s excellent book The Design of Childhood.2Lange, A. (2018). The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. 

Nicholson argued—and subsequent research has supported3Maxwell, L. E., Mitchell, M. R., & Evans, G. W. (2008). Effects of play equipment and loose parts on preschool children’s outdoor play behavior: An observational study and design intervention. Children Youth and Environments, 18(2), 36–63.—that children’s play is enriched by the availability of loose parts in their environment. With loose parts, children create their own worlds instead of playing within the boundaries of someone else’s design. This kind of open-ended, self-directed play is critical to development, supporting important cognitive processes such as symbolic thinking. 

Do loose parts come in digital form?

Throughout Technology’s Child (and in my series of posts about the two-step decision tool (here, here, and here), I discuss the importance of self-directed digital experiences. These are experiences that place children in the driver’s seat of their digital interactions. Children, and not technology, are in control. Self-directed digital experiences are well-aligned with the concept of loose parts, which give children the freedom and agency to shape their own play experiences. 

Self-directed digital experiences do exist, but they can be difficult to come by. Take, for instance, the PAW Patrol game that my son Oliver played for a stretch when he was four. (Unluckily for Oliver, this was about the same time I was writing the chapter about loose parts and play, and so his time with the app was cut short.) 

PAW Patrol: Rescue Run presents children with a series of missions located in different parts of Adventure Bay: Jake’s Mountain, The Bay, Downtown, and so on. For each mission, there is a clear and singular objective: get to the end of the course as efficiently as possible and while collecting as many pup treats and badges as you can. The actions, the pacing, everything is predetermined by the designers of the game. The pup treats and badges keep children playing for as long as their parents will let them in the hopes of earning one more badge or exceeding their previous pup treat record. 

It was a bit unnerving for me to watch Oliver play PAW Patrol as I was reading and writing about loose parts. There was nothing loose about the parts in this game. Oliver was being led by the game’s rules and rewards…and he loved it. As long as he was playing, his attention wasn’t his. It belonged to the game.

I’m not arguing for parents to keep their kids away from rule-based play experiences. There are lots of kinds of play, including the kind with rules, and they all have a role in supporting children’s development. In fact, as children get older, more and more of their play becomes rule-based.4Parker, J. G., Rubin, K. H., Erath, S. A., Wojslawowicz, J. C., & Buskirk, A. A. (2006). Peer relationships, child development, and adjustment: A developmental psychopathology perspective. In Developmental psychopathology: Theory and method, Vol. 1, 2nd ed (pp. 419–493). John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 

Now that Oliver is six, we’re playing more board games, and he’s starting to participate in organized sports. Learning to follow rules, enjoying the thrill of rewards, and managing the sting of defeat are all valuable experiences and a necessary part of growing up.     

I removed PAW Patrol: Rescue Run from Oliver’s tablet because I felt that these particular rules weren’t adding much value to his play experiences, and they were taking away from time he might otherwise be engaged with loose parts. 

Cardboard boxes can be difficult to come by in the digital realm, but I look for the following qualities when it comes to Oliver’s digital play: 

  • open-ended games that offer multiple paths for exploration and discovery
  • opportunities to create or construct, whether a drawing, a game world, or perhaps a new understanding of how the world works  
  • self-paced play that allows kids to remain in the driver’s seat of their digital experiences
  • an absence of (or at least minimal) collectible rewards like points and trophies that make it difficult to disengage

It’s unlikely that all digital play experiences will exhibit these qualities, and that’s okay (remember, you’re aiming for “good enough” digital parenting). Think of them more like a goal that you’re aiming for rather than a prescription you must follow, or else. The goal is there to help guide you and your children towards the best of what digital play has to offer. It’s also a reminder that sometimes the best loose parts don’t come in pixel form. 

Notes:

  • 1
    Nicholson, S. (1971). How not to cheat children, the theory of loose parts. Landscape Architecture, 62(1), 30–34.
  • 2
    Lange, A. (2018). The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. 
  • 3
    Maxwell, L. E., Mitchell, M. R., & Evans, G. W. (2008). Effects of play equipment and loose parts on preschool children’s outdoor play behavior: An observational study and design intervention. Children Youth and Environments, 18(2), 36–63.
  • 4
    Parker, J. G., Rubin, K. H., Erath, S. A., Wojslawowicz, J. C., & Buskirk, A. A. (2006). Peer relationships, child development, and adjustment: A developmental psychopathology perspective. In Developmental psychopathology: Theory and method, Vol. 1, 2nd ed (pp. 419–493). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.