Children’s Play in the Digital Age
An Interview with Jackie Marsh

Jackie Marsh is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Sheffield in England, where for more than two decades, she has undertaken research on
young children’s digital literacy and play in homes and in formal and informal
learning settings. She helped examine the role of families in their children’s
digital literacy, play development, and play lives. Most recently, Marsh has
focused on how play in maker spaces in homes and schools promotes digital
literacy and STEM learning, and she continues to engage with the Maker{Futures} program at the University of Sheffield. Key words: digital literacy;
digital play; internet of toys; Iona and Peter Opie; tablets; technology; toys;
video games; YouTube

American Journal of Play: Much of your research has centered on studying
children’s digital literacy and play. What are some of the methodologicalchallenges to this kind of work? How have you addressed these challenges?
Jackie Marsh: There are numerous methodological challenges researchers facewhen undertaking studies on children’s digital literacy and play. First, defining what is meant by digital literacy is important, because that frames theunit of analysis and the methodological choices made in any study. For
many researchers working in this area, the New Literacy Studies’s emphasis on the plurality of literacy—focusing on literacies—is key, as there aremany kinds of literacy practices involved in digital activities. Therefore,
having a broad emphasis on digital literacies as meaning-making practices
that involve digital technology use in some way is important. Similarly,
understanding play as a complex activity that has many facets means that
researchers need to be open to having their assumptions about digital play
challenged and their understanding thus extended.
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		 Second, if the digital literacy and play practices of children are to bestudied in the home, this presents logistical challenges. We have undertaken
numerous studies that have involved home visits, and these have required
a careful building of relationships with children and their families and awillingness to be flexible and adapt to the families’ needs. To collect data
about children’s digital play and communication in the home outside of
the researchers’ visits, we have sometimes recruited parents as coresearchers who have captured their children’s practices using diaries, cameras,
and mobile phones (for example, the use of the WhatsApp app to record
observations and interact with the research team).
		 Third, a key methodological challenge when working with young children is to ensure that children’s voices and perspectives are clearly heard
and respected. We have used a wide range of methods to ensure that children can be active participants in the research process, including the use ofpoint-of-view cameras (such as GoPro cameras), diaries, collages, puppets,
and so on.
AJP: How did you play as a child and how has that influenced your approachto studying children’s play?
Marsh: I was a young child in the 1960s, and so, obviously, technology did notfeature largely in my play. A lot of my play took place outdoors. In thestreet, hopscotch was a favorite game, and I also spent hours making mud
pies in my grandmother’s yard. However, I was fascinated by television. My
family first had a small black-and-white set that we rented when I was aged
about four and I enjoyed watching the first BBC children’s programs suchas Watch with Mother and the puppet characters Bill and Ben in The Flower
Pot Men. My imaginative play included characters from these programs. I
think these early experiences enabled me to understand the power of media
and technology to ignite the imagination and to foster play.
AJP: Tell us a little more about your educational background and what led you
to study young children’s digital literacy practices and play.
Marsh: I grew up in a working-class family and was the first in my family toattend university. Throughout my education, I was aware of the gap between
my home experiences and the world of school. For example, my childhood
was not represented in the pages of the picture books I encountered atschool. I then became a primary teacher in the 1980s and worked in schools
in low socioeconomic areas. I was shocked to find that little had changed inthat the school environments still appeared to reflect little of the children’sChildren’s Play in the Digital Ageworlds. I did my best to address this, and part of this quest involved finding out what the children’s cultural interests were and identifying how I
could then incorporate some of these interests in the curriculum. This led
me to develop educational innovations relating to popular culture, and I
soon noticed that the children were enthused and more engaged in literacy
activities than ever as a result of these changes.
		 When I moved to work in a university, I began to undertake research
about this phenomenon. My research involved studies in which I traced
children’s cultural interests and explored the impact of incorporating theseinterests into the literacy curriculum. In the 1990s and early 2000s, children’s popular cultural interests were becoming increasingly shaped bytechnology, and so my research became focused on digital literacy practices and play. I literally followed the children’s interests and found myself
immersed in the digital world!
AJP: Some of your research has focused on the changes in children’s play sincethe 1950s. What continuities have you found?
Marsh: We have undertaken a number of studies examining changes in thenature of play over time due to changes in technology. Using the collectionof information about play developed by Iona and Peter Opie in the UKfrom the 1950s through the 1980s [https://www.opiearchive.org/about/childhoods_and_play—eds.] as a starting point, our research has set out
to explore the ways in which the categories of play noted by the Opies havetransformed over time. In a book I coauthored with my colleague Julia
Bishop called Changing Play: Play, Media, and Commercial Culture fromthe 1950s to the Present Day, we summarized the key continuities in playover this period as relating to functions, framings, and forms.
		 The functions of play have not changed over time, in that children play
because it is fun; it satisfies cognitive, social, and emotional needs; and it
enables children to respond to and make sense of the world around them.
Children also frame play today in the ways that it was framed in the past,signaling when play moves in and out of pretend mode, for example. Thiskind of signaling takes place even in virtual spaces, albeit the ways of metacommunicating the changing play frames are different. Finally, the formsof play are still, in general, the same as they have always been, including
imaginative play, physical play with and without playthings, verbal play,musical play, and so on. There are some types of play that are in less evidence in contemporary times—for example, some of the traditional ring

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games that were recorded by the Opies—but other genres have emerged,
such as dance offs. There is no need to be concerned that play is somehow
disappearing because of technology—it is very much alive and kicking!
AJP: What are some of the ways play has changed?
Marsh: In Changing Play, Julia and I characterized the changes as relating tocontexts, texts, practices, and processes. The social, cultural, and economic
contexts for play have changed over time. For children in industrializedsocieties whose families have sufficient income, there are many more
opportunities to purchase play experiences than in the past, from buying
a wide variety of toys and games to visiting theme parks. There are great
disparities in this area, of course, as many societies have great unevenness
in family access to economic and social security.
		 The processes of play relate to the way in which play practices aretransmitted and shared across contexts. In the Opies’ day, new games andrhymes and popular crazes spread within and across countries throughrapid transmission in playgrounds, streets, and families. Nowadays, theinternet enables instant transmission across vast distances internationally,
with sites and apps such as YouTube and TikTok facilitating the sharing of
new and adapted content. Play has always involved some kind of bricolage
as children weave together aspects of their daily lives into the play, but today
we can see a kind of intensified bricolage—technology enables an accelerated processing of play and the layers that become woven together (playtexts and practices) and can constitute a complex mix of offline, online,
physical, digital, local, and global domains. For example, we have accountsof children playing online together in Minecraft and then re-creating scenarios from this play in offline fantasy games in their local woods, incorporating characters into that play that have emerged from gamer folklore
and shared through sites such as YouTube.
AJP: You have written that it is not possible, in contemporary play practices, toseparate online and offline domains. What do you mean?
Marsh: That is not strictly the case, as it is possible to separate online and offline
domains in that one domain is digital and thus virtual and the other analogue and very much physical. However, the boundaries between the
two are blurring in contemporary play practices. There have always been
blurred boundaries in this regard. In the early days of online multiplayer
games, players reported incorporating aspects of their offline lives into their
online play, and vice versa. But now we have a world in which children’s play

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integrates the online and offline domains in fluid ways across all kinds ofplay practices, not just multiplayer games. For example, in a recent project
we found some children used Fitbits to engage in competitive physical playwith peers while others played with robot toys using apps that directed theactions of the robot, and children in one family used Alexa to count to ten
as they played hide and seek in the home. In these instances, the online
and offline domains are so integrated that it would be meaningless to try
to conceive of them separately.
AJP: What is the “Internet of Toys,” and how has it changed the ways in whichsome children play?
Marsh: The ‘”Internet of Toys”, or IoToys, is used to describe those toys that arelinked in some way to digital services and applications. Using Bluetooth or
WiFi, some physical toys can connect to the Internet and this enables users
to interact with the toy, giving and receiving communications, or they canlink the toy to an online virtual world or video game. Other toys, such as
robots and drones, connect to apps that enable the toy to be controlled.
An early example of the genre was Hello Barbie, a Barbie doll thatused voice recognition software to communicate with children. However,it was controversial in that recordings of children were sent to third parties for processing and a researcher found that the system could be hacked
into, giving access to the system. The doll was discontinued in 2017. Other
examples of IoToys include Furby Boom and robots such as Dot and Dash.
		 These types of toys enable children to play in ways that blur boundaries
between physical and virtual worlds, between private and public spaces, andbetween the local and the global. Children playing alone in their bedrooms
with some of these toys can connect with others digitally. For example, anapp enables a Furby Boom user to swap virtual objects with others who
also use the app. This kind of connected play is made possible with IoToys,
although, of course, there are concerns about data security, privacy, andsafety in the use of such toys.
AJP: What do we know about tablet use by young children—particularly thoseunder three years old? Should parents be concerned?
Marsh: There have been numerous studies that indicate that in some countries
children’s use of tablets at home is widespread. For example, in the United
Kingdom, a recent survey by Ofcom [the government’s Office of Communications—eds.] identified that 99 percent of children went online and 69
percent used a tablet to do so. In a project I led a few years ago, we found

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that 25 percent of children under three who lived in a house in which a tablet was used owned their own devices. The affordances of the touchscreen
device mean that it is accessible to very young children.
		 Children use the devices in a range of ways. They use them to view andtake photographs, watch videos, play games, listen to rhymes and music,
browse the internet, engage in creative activities, read e-books, and soon. Children also use tablets to connect with family members throughvideo-conferencing apps, and sometimes games are played during theseencounters, such as hide-and-seek.
		 Tablet use can be very beneficial for children. They can acquire digitalskills, learn key skills, and gain subject knowledge in all educational areas,
but particularly in early literacy and mathematics. They can also develop
oral language and communication skills, enhance gross and fine motor
skills, and so on. Importantly, tablet use can also give children access totheir cultural heritage, something of consequence in contexts in which kindergartens and schools may not have songs, rhymes, and books in children’s
home languages. Play with tablets can be highly creative and imaginative.
		 Parents and care givers are understandably concerned that their children’s technology use is age appropriate and that there is a range of guidance available to help them navigate this complex world (for example,
the international digital literacy network called DigiLitEY that I chaired
produced a useful guide [which you can find at https://digilitey.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/publication/information-for-parents/smart-paremting—eds.]).
For very young children, it is helpful for parents to use tablets with theirchildren when they can, because the children learn more when there is suchinteraction. There is also a role for parents in ensuring children have accessto good quality apps and sites. It is important that children’s tablet use ismoderated in terms of time spent using it, because overuse of technology
means that they are not spending time on other activities and that someareas of development may thus be limited. But it is also essential not tofocus on screen time at the expense of an emphasis on the quality of use.
AJP: In the research study titled Children, Technology, and Play, you found evidence that children learn quite a bit from educational games and apps.
But what about when they play with games and apps that are not explicitly
educational?
Marsh: We have found that children develop a range of skills and knowledge
when playing with games and apps that are not explicitly educational. This

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has been long known in the case of television, where research demonstrates that children learn a great deal about the world when watching noneducational programs. However, it is also the case with other media. For
example, children playing a bus simulation game on a PlayStation or Xbox
may learn navigational skills (directionality, map skills, distance, and soon) as well as develop gross motor skills and fine motor skills as they use
handsets. They may also enhance their reading skills through engagementwith on-screen texts. This kind of incidental learning is powerful, especiallyas games like these enable children to revisit skills and build incrementallyon their knowledge through the game’s levels. They are motivated to engage
as the games relate to their interests and can be managed at their own pace.
All of these factors are, we know, important for learning.
AJP: Many parents fear that children’s use of digital technology makes them lessimaginative and creative. What has your research shown?
Marsh: I have undertaken research in this area for over twenty years, and I havenot seen a reduction in how imaginative and creative children are overthat time. We have many instances of data that demonstrate wonderfully
how children’s use of digital technology can lead to highly inventive andcreative acts. For example, children create imaginative story worlds basedon characters that they have encountered in apps and games and can spend
hours developing narratives, rehearsing language, and so on. We have seen
many amazing films, photographs, video games, virtual worlds and virtual
drawings and paintings that children have created.
		 However, what is important is the type of hardware or software thatchildren are using. More open-ended digital tools, apps, and sites foster
creativity. We found that YouTube offered many possibilities for being creative as children viewed craft videos, for example, and then used that as astarting point for their own crafting. Games such as Minecraft and Roblox
offer numerous opportunities for children to be creative and inventive.
Cameras in mobile phones are used in very creative ways, particularly ifthey are used in an app that includes editing features. These are just a few
examples—the list of ways in which children are imaginative and creativein their digital play is endless.
		 Children are also just as imaginative and creative as they ever were inplay that does not involve technology. Fantasy play, language play, art andcraft, singing and dancing, and so on—they are all part of contemporary
children’s everyday play lives.

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AJP: What about the stereotype that technology is isolating? How much do
children collaborate in play with digital technologies?
Marsh: In the studies we have conducted, we did not find that technology isisolating. Children do play with devices independently at times, but theyalso collaborate in various ways in their play with digital technologies.
Some games and apps are designed to foster collaborative play, including
virtual worlds, video games, and so on. Devices such as PlayStation, Xbox,and Nintendo enable such collaborative play, in addition to online apps
and sites. But children also play together using apps and devices that are
not particularly designed for collaborative play. For example, we foundexamples of families in which siblings played games together using AI
voice assistants such as Alexa and Siri and other families in which children
played imaginatively with distant friends using video conferencing apps.
		 I would like to make a case for individual play with technology, however. Such use can develop digital and other skills, enhance knowledge
and understanding of the world, and lead to feelings of independence andmastery. Children need individual play with technology alongside theircollaborative digital play.
AJP: What are the digital skills that playing with digital technologies help children develop?
Marsh: A very wide range of digital skills may be developed when playing withtechnology. These include technical and operational skills such as operating devices and navigating apps. Children may also acquire critical digital
literacy skills through their play using technology, which includes information and data literacy (conducting searches, browsing, analyzing, andfiltering data), content creation, managing safety and privacy issues and soon. In addition, children can learn important skills related to digital citizenship as they play online with both known and unknown others, learning
how to communicate with others in a digital age. However, not all children
have equal access to technology, and some children receive more support
than others at home in the development and practice of these skills. It is,therefore, important for schools to provide opportunities for all children
to acquire digital skills using playful means.
AJP: What other kinds of skills does this type of digital play help children
develop?
Marsh: Children acquire subject knowledge across a wide range of areas throughdigital play. There are many apps for young children that aim to develop

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literacy, mathematical and science skills, and knowledge, but children also
gain other subject knowledge through watching television and YouTube
content, engaging with games that feature historical characters or are
located in international contexts, and so on.
		 Children also develop cognitive, social, physical, emotional, and creative skills in their digital play. Executive function and working memory,for example, can be enhanced through the use of some games and apps.
Through digital play, children can learn to communicate with both present and distant others, to understand others’ viewpoints and to empathizewith them. Physical skills are developed as children control devices, butthey are also developed in their use of the devices. For example, we havefound some children are using wearable devices to capture physical play,others are engaging in dancing competitions using video capture apps orpracticing football skills they have learned from playing FIFA video games,and so on. Playing video games also enables children to develop importantlife skills, such as the ability to remain focused, resilient, and motivated in
the light of disappointments and challenges.
AJP: How does digital play support children with different or additional needs?
Marsh: Digital play can be very beneficial for children with different or additional needs. There are specific apps made for children who are deaf andhearing impaired, for example, which enable them to engage in storytellingand messaging using sign language. Similarly, apps for children who are
visually impaired include e-books and apps that promote sensory play. In
our studies, we have found that playing apps can support children on theautistic spectrum as some find the playing of games to be a calming process.
However, it is the case that there needs to be more focus on the provisionof technology that can support such play because there is a woeful lack of
specific provision for children with different or additional needs.
AJP: What are some of the barriers that stop children from developing theseskills through digital play?
Marsh: The first and most significant barrier is socioeconomic. There is a great
disparity in the levels of access that children have to technology due to thecircumstances of their families, and this creates a digital play divide. An
additional significant barrier is the design of the apps, games, and sites
themselves. For example, the more open and self-directed the digital playis as a result of technical design of a device, app, site, or service, the morechildren are able to develop creative skills. I chaired a panel for the Depart-

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the Educational Criteria for Early Years Apps: Evaluation of Communication,
Language, and Literacy Apps, which came out in July, 2019—for identifying those apps that were more likely to lead to the development of literacy
skills. It was surprising to find that a number of apps ostensibly designed
to foster literacy learning through play were not compliant with many of
the criteria, thus limiting their educational value.
		 A further barrier to digital play can be the family context. Some parents
who are overly anxious about online safety issues, for example, can actuallylimit children’s digital play in ways that are not helpful. It is important toachieve a balance between monitoring children’s technology use to ensure
it is safe and healthy and permissive enough to allow exploration, experimentation, and creativity.
AJP: What are good examples of digital games or apps that develop creativity?
Marsh: YouTube is an example of a site that fosters a great deal of creativity
through its sharing of videos that can educate and inspire others. Children
can also be creative as they develop their own content to share on YouTube.
Games such as Minecraft and Roblox enable children to create games andworlds that foster their imagination and develop their creative skills. There
are many apps that promote creativity—some notable ones are the BBC
apps for young children: Playtime Island and Get Creative. Toontastic,
which enables children to create and share animations and some of theapps created by the companies LEGO, Sago Mini, and Toca Boca are alsoof good quality.
AJP: What role should adult caretakers, teachers, and older siblings play inchildren’s play with digital technology?
Marsh: There are a number of roles that they could take. Facilitating play throughthe provision of the right hardware and software is important, as is themonitoring role, as I have already mentioned. However, it is also important that caretakers, siblings, and teachers, when they are able, play withand alongside children. This can not only serve to strengthen familial andsocial relationships, it can support the acquisition of skills and knowledge
as adults scaffold learning.
AJP: In the research project Children, Technology and Play, you asked children
to design toys they would like to see. What did you learn?
Marsh: Children’s inventions for future toys were interesting in that they focusedon developing toys that linked together online and offline domains more

Children’s Play in the Digital Ageclosely. They also wanted toys to foster a sense of independence and selfefficacy, and some children designed toys that would enable them to linkup with distant friends. These are all features of the kinds of toys and otherprovisions that some in the industry are currently focused on producing.
It was also of interest that the children incorporated elements of branding
and marketing into their designs, demonstrating their awareness of contemporary commercial approaches to play.
AJP: What kind of things should the toy and game industries consider when
they design items for digital play?
Marsh: In the Children, Technology, and Play report, we suggested that thechildren’s media industry should work to develop a set of standards fortechnology and play. The standards should emphasize that the need forgoods and services, among other factors, be age appropriate, foster learning, meet a diverse range of learning and development needs, be culturally
and linguistically diverse, enable children to play safely, cultivate creativity
and imagination, give children sufficient choice and autonomy, promotesustainability, and be tested appropriately with children before release.
		 We also found that there was a concerning lack of diversity in digitalplay products. There needs to be a focus on the development of toys, games,and services that are much more diverse in terms of representation of
racial and ethnic identities, gendered identities, and disabilities. In addition, many children live in families with LGBT+ parents or other family
members, or they live in single-parent families or with extended families
who cohabit, or they live in foster or adoptive homes, and so on, yet few
games, products, and services reflect these realities. Further, more apps areneeded in languages other than English, which dominate the market.
AJP: What are some of the yet unanswered questions about children’s play thatyou would like to see future scholars tackle?
Marsh: As I have indicated, there are important gaps in knowledge about digitalplay in diverse childhoods, and this needs urgent attention if we are to create knowledge that can inform the next stage of development of products
and services for children.
		 There are specific groups of children for whom we have very little
knowledge about their digital play, and they could be a focus for future
work (for example, refugee and asylum seekers, children with different or
additional needs, looked-after children and children who have experienced
domestic violence). Such research should be coproduced with organizations

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that have many years of experience working with children and families
within these groups.
		 In addition, we have few studies that have examined children’s digitalplay longitudinally. It would be helpful to trace children’s experiences ofplay with technology from birth and into their transition to formal schooling to identify ways in which such play can support, or indeed limit, theirdevelopment.
		 There are also important questions to be addressed in relation to therole of digital play and learning. Maker spaces can offer playful environments for the development of digital skills, and there is much work to bedone on how best to support such learning in both formal and informal
settings. Our Maker{Futures} program is focused on this area and will be
addressing these issues in the years ahead.
		 Finally, there are going to be further advances in technology in the
future that will be important to trace. In particular, the development of
the metaverse has significant implications for children if they are goingto have opportunities to be fully immersed in virtual environments, withpossibilities for meeting both known and unknown others. There will be
issues of safety and privacy to address, as well as researching how best to
develop products that will enable creative and productive play for children
in the metaverse.
		 There are many talented and creative scholars currently engaged inresearch on digital play, and I am sure they will have many other areas to
add to this list. I look forward to learning of their work in the years ahead.
Of one thing I am certain—digital play will continue to be an importantarea for research, giving its ever-growing presence in the lives of children
and families. Over the past two decades, I have seen its evolution firsthand and feel that we are still only in the early stages of understanding
the implications for children. As technological developments escalate at
an even faster pace in the years ahead, there needs to be greater government focus on this area of work and additional funding for international,
collaborative research if we are to develop approaches and resources that
ensure our children have happy, healthy, and productive digital play lives.