Play in the Digital Age

Final Assignment for E-Learning and Digital Cultures
Kevin Shawn Hudson

Conclusion

Are manufacturers marketing products to children with an interactive storyline because it is another valuable marketing tool? Is it just another way to reach their audience and entice further sales of the product? Are we turning our children into digital consumers by having these links to the digital / virtual worlds?

Or are our children really digital natives in that they come naturally to the technology that is all around them, and it is natural for them to want to play with their toys virtually in the digital world? According to Zevenbergen and Logan (2008) children born in the twenty first century are more able and adapt easier to new technologies than their parents and grandparents because they are raised in a society where technology has become part of their everyday life. But are they more capable because it comes naturally to them, or because it is marketed to them?

Fleer (2009) comments that play allows children to learn from the world around them. Play allows children to develop while they engage in everyday experiences that the world around them provides. Our world is filled with computers, phones, tablets and televisions. It's logical that a child would accept a play experience from the items he / she sees, and sees their family members interacting with every day. If everyone now has a tablet and touch enabled portable device, it makes sense that our children would want one too.

The world has progressed to the digital, and there is no escaping the influence of the digital culture. Although I would be curious to study the development of children outside of the influence of the media and marketing, it may just be a necessary evil. Exposing our children to the influences of pop culture, the digital and the virtual now, can only help them in their development later as education shifts to cater to the digital native. As Prensky (2009) says "for our twenty-first century kids, technology is their birthright," so why would we deny them every possible advantage.

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