Winter/Spring 1999

WHOSE PLAY IS IT, ANYWAY?
by Diane Levin

Something worrisome has happened to children's play over the past 15 years. Teachers all over the country have described how instead of creating their own play scenarios, today's children are mimicking television scripts.

The best toys for building imagination and creativity are open-ended and unstructured. Toys such as building blocks and clay encourage children to shape their own creative play. But many of todays most popular toys -- popular because they are marketed to children on television programs -- can have precisely the opposite effect.

Toys that are based on TV programs or movies -- such as Batman or Power Rangers or Star Wars -- can take control of play away from children and channel their play in unhealthy directions. Because many of the popular shows linked to toys have violent themes, the behavior that children imitate is violent behavior. When creative and imaginative play is replaced by imitative play, childrens growth and learning can be undermined.

The deregulation of children's television by the Federal Communications Commission in 1984 is the landmark event that changed children's play. Deregulation made it possible to market toys through TV programs. Within one year of deregulation, 9 of the 10 best-selling toys were featured on their own television shows. Since then, most best-selling toys continue to be linked to the media.

When children become dependent on toys that tell them exactly how to play, they are less likely to use play to work on the issues they need to work on in the ways they need to work on them. Their imagination, creativity, and ability to find interesting problems to explore and resolve are all undermined. They have a harder time playing with healthier, open-ended toys, which do not show them exactly how to play.

Few are willing to admit responsibility for the current situation. Government officials have not taken seriously enough their responsibility to protect children from the exploitation of toy manufacturers. Few schools have adequately taken into account the changes in childhood play/toy culture or their responsibility in developing approaches for dealing with it.

The toy industry says it is the parents' job to decide what toys are appropriate for their children. But in an effort to maximize profits, manufacturers of media-linked toys have saturated the childhood play culture with toys that are not good for children... but which many children desperately want.

This often puts parents in an impossible position. They are constantly exhorted to serve as gate-keepers by the same toy and entertainment companies who mount million-dollar advertising campaigns and create seductive TV shows to knock down the gates.

This is not a fair contest. Children do not have the tools to determine what toys are good for them. And then, when parents try to do their job, it often results in increased levels of stress with their children.

Why should the toy industry make it harder for parents to do a good job? Why should so many of the toys the industry markets hardest be bad for childrens play? The time has come for all adults -- those in the toy industry, lawmakers, educators, parents, and others -- to work together to promote healthy toys and play, and to reduce the amount of "entertainment" violence in young childrens lives.

Diane Levin is a professor of education at Wheelock College in Boston and the author of Remote Control Childhood?  This article is adapted from Play, Policy, & Practice Connections, published by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, with permission from the author.