“from eyes to hands: Behind the Embrace of the screen-free playscape,”

Screens and Illusionism: Alternative Teleologies of Mediation edited by Peter Bloom and Dominique Jullien. Edinburgh University Press, 2024, 75-92.

“From Eyes to Hands: Behind the Embrace of the “Screen-Free” Playscape,” in

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-screens-and-illusionism.html

Examining a series of recent toy audio players, this chapter explores the contemporary rise of “screen-free” devices for children and their aims to assuage parental anxieties around new media. The chapter explores the roots of today’s anxiety toward children’s screen time as an extension of “media effects” discourse and describes the ways that screen-free audio toys emphasize touch and hearing instead of the visual. I argue that these toys’ prioritization of traditional “hands-on” play both appeals to parental nostalgia and frames children’s engagement as creative and imaginative activity. Toymakers argue that these toys’ simplified interfaces facilitate children’s agency and control, yet I argue that the toys’ underlying technological protocols obscure the degree to which adult users retain the ability to establish and manage the parameters for children’s digital play.