In a recent post, I explored the concept of “loose parts” in children’s play. As a very brief recap of the concept, when children play with loose parts such as cardboard boxes, pebbles, sticks, even paper clips, they have the freedom to create their own worlds instead of playing within the bounds of someone else’s design.1Nicholson, S. (1971). How not to cheat children, the theory of loose parts. Landscape Architecture, 62(1), 30–34. This kind of self-directed, open-ended play is an important part of children’s cognitive and social development.2Maxwell, 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.
In Technology’s Child, I argue that although loose parts can be found in digital form, they may not be quite as “loose” as in the analog world. I offer two examples to make my case:
Example #1: painting on paper vs. an app
The typical kid-oriented painting app comes with a limited selection of colors and a similarly limited ability to mix colors (if that ability is even available). These selections are predefined by the app developer. In the analog world, there are no limits to the gradations of colors that can be created through mixing two or more colors together. I use this example to make the point that a lot of texture and nuance can be lost when converting something into binary 1s and 0s.3For further discussion of this point, see Gardner, H., & Davis, K. (2013). The app generation: How today’s youth navigate identity, intimacy, and imagination in a digital world. Yale University Press; Lanier, J. (2010). You are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. Alfred A. Knopf.
Example #2: toy mashups
I use the movie franchise Toy Story to illustrate how kids are prone to combining analog toys in all sorts of unexpected ways. Sheriff Woody and Buzz Lightyear come from different worlds and they’ve been designed at different scales, but that doesn’t stop Andy (and later, Bonnie) from bringing them together with other toys like Slinky Dog and Rex the dinosaur for all sorts of adventures. It’s much harder to combine digital play things in this way, especially when you’re dealing with apps that don’t communicate with each other.4I do observe that other kinds of digital experiences, such as “phygital” toys that combine analog and digital components, may be easier to mix in the spirit of Toy Story.
Some new thoughts on the looseness of digital loose parts
I still stand by these arguments, but I’ve recently started thinking about instances when the digital realm could actually be “looser” than the analog world. I credit these new thoughts to the conversations I’ve had while speaking about my book, as well as the excellent reflections of the graduate students in the course I’m currently teaching on child development in a digital age at the University of Washington. These conversations have prompted me to consider two cases where the digital realm might have the advantage when it comes to loose-parts play.
Case #1: low cost of failure
In Technology’s Child, I discuss the benefits of a low cost of failure in the context of video games, but not explicitly in relation to loose parts. One of the compelling features of video games is the fact that your character can be defeated over and over again, and you can simply start over and keep trying until you succeed. (Note that this is pretty much the opposite of children’s school experiences, which are full of one-shot, high-stakes assessments.)
In our recent class discussions of loose parts, some of my graduate students observed that the low cost of failure associated with many digital experiences, from video games to drawing to music composition, may operate as a type of loose part thanks to the “undo” button and its equivalents. If you mess up your drawing, or even part of it, digital erasure and do-overs are quick, precise, and complete. Sure, you can erase a pencil drawing in the analog world, but it’s somewhat more tedious and there are typically remnants of the original lines. As a result, my students hypothesize, children might feel freer to experiment and make mistakes when operating in the digital realm.
Case #2: unique capabilities
The second case relates to devices and applications that make it possible to do things virtually that you can’t do IRL (“in real life”). One of my students offered the example of Painting VR on Oculus Quest, which provides a far more impressive ability to mix and apply paints to a canvas than your standard kids’ drawing app. Like other virtual reality art creation tools, Painting VR comes with a wide variety of painting tools, including standard paintbrushes that you might have lying around your house, but also many others that you probably don’t (a cone brush, a spray can, a customized drill that lets you combine different brushes together). You can also do things that aren’t possible IRL, like changing the size of your canvas or the thickness of your brush.
Unique capabilities extend to other types of digital experiences, such as using materials like clay, diamond, obsidian, and redstone to build (and sometimes blow up) structures and cities in Minecraft. By introducing new materials and tools, or by playing with standard laws of physics, some digital loose parts like those found in Painting VR and Minecraft let us do things we ordinarily can’t.
Takeaway
These two cases suggest that digital loose parts can, in some cases, be looser than IRL loose parts. By offering a low cost of failure, they can expand what we dare to do. By giving us unique capabilities, they can open up new possibilities for acting on the world. This all seems like a good thing when it comes to children’s play experiences. And yet, when it comes to the play experiences that most children are having most of the time, I’d say that the analog loose parts that kids typically play with are, on balance, looser than the digital loose parts they encounter. (The average kid is more likely to engage with a painting app on a tablet or phone than through a VR headset.) It will be interesting to see if this is still the case ten years from now!
Notes:
- 1Nicholson, S. (1971). How not to cheat children, the theory of loose parts. Landscape Architecture, 62(1), 30–34.
- 2Maxwell, 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.
- 3For further discussion of this point, see Gardner, H., & Davis, K. (2013). The app generation: How today’s youth navigate identity, intimacy, and imagination in a digital world. Yale University Press; Lanier, J. (2010). You are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. Alfred A. Knopf.
- 4I do observe that other kinds of digital experiences, such as “phygital” toys that combine analog and digital components, may be easier to mix in the spirit of Toy Story.
