FAQs from Adults about Kids’ Play and Pop Culture

Nathan Holbert:

Welcome to Pop Off, a little segment that we have here at Pop and Play, where we take a few minutes to chat about education, play, and pop culture as it's happening in the public conversation. I'm your host, Nathan Holbert, and I am joined by the zine queen herself, Haeny Yoon.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Zine queen?

 

Nathan Holbert:

That's right, you heard it here.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Wow, okay. Sorry to actual zine makers, don't take offense to that. Hi. Okay. So in today's short episode, we thought we might take a few minutes to pop off about questions that we get asked all the time as educational researchers and professors of education and play in technology. And in the spirit of inquiry, obviously there are no dumb questions, but we want to talk about some of the questions we get asked a lot and admit to all of you that we don't have all the answers.

 

Nathan Holbert:

These are questions that people ask a lot because they're hard and because-

 

Haeny Yoon:

And impossible sometimes.

 

Nathan Holbert:

And they're impossible and they're interconnected and sort of feel intense around things that you care about, so they're reasonable questions that people are asking.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Okay.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Well, let's start with one then.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Okay.

 

Nathan Holbert:

And I'm going to throw it to you, but I also have some thoughts on this question. So the question that we get asked pretty frequently is how much screen time can my kids have? And then this goes to anywhere from, is it okay to have a screen at all, or am I doing too much screen time? They want to know what's the right amount of screen time for kids.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, a very good question. No, I'm just kidding. Kind of not a very good question, but I do remember 10 years ago when I was doing job talks, I got asked that a lot because I'm in early childhood and people are very concerned about how much screen time young kids would have and if it will mess up their brains, etc., etc. And I remember even then, I didn't actually have a good answer for it because I think about how much screen time I get, and it's very appalling. One of my colleagues was like, "How do you watch all of these shows? When do you watch them?" And I was like, "Oh, screen time is endless for me. There is actually no limits on that."

 

Nathan Holbert:

I've been astonished by how much you are on the screen.

 

Haeny Yoon:

I know, I can consume a lot of stuff and I would say I'm a pretty smart person.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, I think that's true. I think that's true. Yeah.

 

Haeny Yoon:

I've accomplished things.

 

Nathan Holbert:

I mean, think of the number of shows you've watched.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yes, and how inspired I've been. I also think about my nephew, Max, shout out to Max-

 

Nathan Holbert:

Hey, Max.

 

Haeny Yoon:

... no shade on you. I mean, his screen time is literally every waking minute of the day, maybe aside from going to school. And I noticed that there's so much that he gets out of his screen time actually, that isn't necessarily dictated towards him. It's not like we give him a quiz like, "What did you learn on Blippi or something?" Or, "What did you learn from watching this episode of Paw Patrol or whatnot?" But I feel like there's phrases that he repeats, things that he uses when he interacts with us, like random factoids that we never knew he actually knew about anything that he just kind of spouts out of nowhere. And it's actually very pleasant and very delightful.

And so I feel like for me, the better question might be what's happening during screen time, socially, emotionally, intellectually, even relationally. And maybe it's less about how much and more about to what ends. And I think about that even the early days when people would ask me about screen time, it was because 10 years ago people were kind of nervous about screens because it wasn't a daily thing.

 

Nathan Holbert:

They were in one location of the house and you required a certain set of procedures to do it, whereas now you can just-

 

Haeny Yoon:

Right, we live in a totally different time, right?

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, I have a screen right here in front of me.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Right, exactly. So I feel like the parameters of that is actually very different.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. And to pick up on a couple of things that you mentioned too, one is the kinds of things that kids, I really liked the words you used, you said pick up when they engage in screen time, and that's a good word choice because the other word choice that people always want to use is what do kids learn? Which I love the word learn, don't get me wrong. But when we use learn in this context, I think what usually happens is people assume learning has to be a certain kind of learning. And, look, my kids speaking of things that they picked up, became absolute experts on sea creatures because they would watch this cartoon, Octonauts, like nonstop.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Oh my God, I know that show. Yes.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Creature report. And that was great. And it's easy for us to see that to go, "Oh, look, they've learned something. They know something about sea creatures." But we might not think of the learning that they do in other kinds of shows and experiences as being equally valuable. But to your point, it can be and it can be useful, and it doesn't have to just be book knowledge, it can be social experiences, awareness of their environment and the space. So there's a broader range of kinds of things that one, quote, unquote, "learns" or picks up.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah. And there's some level of engagement with the broader context that you can do through media versus the horror of real life.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Talking about things are great right now.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, but I don't say that facetiously, I just think that there's a lot of different things around social, political issues that media can also convey, and do, and bring questions to the forefront that maybe we're not comfortable figuring out how to do ourselves, or that there is a social reality too that's happening outside of screens that we don't really know how to navigate.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. And, boy, even that goes down a whole 'nother thread of why it's important for our media to represent a wide range of experiences, right?

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah.

 

Nathan Holbert:

But one other thing I wanted to point out on the screen time is, and again, this is you kind of alluded to, is that it's not just what's happening on the screen, it's also what's happening in the context and around, and when the screen time is happening, I often think about not just what are you watching, but who are you watching with? What are you doing while you're watching it? And it's fun to watch things with kids, whether those are your kids or whether those are young people in your classroom, spend time watching things with them. I know you and I have talked about the fact that in my family, Bob's Burgers is kind of a family media that we all consume together.

 

Haeny Yoon:

And great costumes that you have.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Great costumes. Exactly. And it bleeds into other things. It's not just the time we spend watching a show, now it's part of the funny jokes we make with each other, it's the costumes we make together. And those are super rich relational and learning experiences as well.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, yeah, it's like identity work and community and belonging.

 

Nathan Holbert:

So screens are great. You heard it here first.

 

Haeny Yoon:

No, that's not true. So, obviously we don't want to be utopian about screens. We're not ending it by saying like, "Oh, screen time is good," but I feel like nothing is all good and nothing is all bad. And it really, I think at the end of the day, I think what we're both saying is that there has to be a level of trust and agency afforded to kids to be able to make some of those decisions.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. And as a responsible adult, you should pay attention to that.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yes, exactly.

 

Nathan Holbert:

And you should engage with them with it.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, exactly.

 

Nathan Holbert:

And not just assume there's a magic number that you're shooting for.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, it's all a little more complex than that.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah.

 

Nathan Holbert:

That's great. Okay, here's another one. Here's another fun question that I'm sure you get a lot. How can I make my curriculum play-based? Or maybe in addition to, how should I be defining and measuring play? Oh, I love it when someone asks how they should measure plays.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Oh, like I said, I mean, it is pretty clear that I get just really frustrated by that kind of a question. It kind of feels to me to sort of miss the point of why we think play might be useful to incorporate in curriculum, but tell me how you define play?

 

Haeny Yoon:

I mean, okay. I don't know how to define play, but I will say it is useful to think about the question that you're asking. Play-based curriculum is actually different from playful conditions. And so I feel like, for instance, in my early childhood context, there's lots of teachers or parents or educators who might come up to me and say like, "Well, we have all of these things to do in school, so we don't really have time to, quote, 'play.'"

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, no time for play.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah. I mean, that seems like already that you're kind of considering play as some kind of curricular thing or an adjacent curricular thing that you have to make time for, but there are plenty of ways that you could create playful conditions. Writing can be playful, science can be playful. All these things could be playful. So for me, it's more like the conditions that play can actually engender, like imagination, freedom, choices, flexibility, design. There's so many things that can be incorporated into play. But I feel like play-based curriculum, like basing a curriculum around some kind of components of play is curriculum. It's not necessarily play, it's just that you're trying to make it play-based, right?

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, this happens with games all the time. There's game-based curriculum.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, I definitely don't love when we try to splice things together and don't understand that the issue isn't that there's not enough of X or Y, it's the issue that we framed both of them as separate beings. And in reality there's ways in which they can coexist and enhance one another. And in doing so, they both transform, right?

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yes.

 

Nathan Holbert:

And certainly trying to say, "Okay, now it's work time, now it's play time, and we'll just try to figure out more blocks of play to squeeze in."

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah. It's kind a false binary and it's not helpful.

 

Nathan Holbert:

No, it devalues play certainly, right?

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah.

 

Nathan Holbert:

And it also communicates to young people that these are separate things and they should never intersect and intertwine, which is something you and I are still dealing with our colleagues sometimes and with our students.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, exactly. That's why we keep on popping and playing.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Here we are.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Okay, we digress. Okay. So this is a question that I think you probably get asked a lot. I will defer to you in this, but I may have an occasional comment.

 

Nathan Holbert:

I love it. Let's go.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Okay. So how do you respond when someone says, "What video games or apps should my kids play with? And is it okay if my kid plays video game X, Grand Theft, or something? What do I do with those violent games?"

 

Nathan Holbert:

Oh my God, I get asked this all the time.

 

Haeny Yoon:

I'm sure.

 

Nathan Holbert:

And I'm always like, "I don't know." Number one, I'm not on the app store all the time figuring out which are the kid apps. So it's a silly question as well, because there are some good games, there are some good apps, there are some bad games, there are some bad apps. Even if some games are kind of bleh, none of them are probably really, really bad for a kid. And games can be okay, they can be great. By and large, they give kids experiences to explore new spaces, interact with systems and rules, engage in some sort of inquiry or problem solving practices.

Certainly, there are some games that are better than others. There are some games that really elevate young people's creative potential and opportunities to ask really interesting, innovative questions, to encounter and explore really deep and thoughtful stories like we talked about with other media, encounter different kinds of stories as well. But with regard to the violent video games, this is one of those things where I'm always like, "Look, I don't know. I'm not the parent of this child we're talking about."

 

Haeny Yoon:

Right. Yes.

 

Nathan Holbert:

"You are and that is a decision you need to make. You need to make a decision for yourself about how much exposure and engagement with violence, whether that's television shows, books, as you mentioned earlier, or video games that you're okay with, that you're comfortable with." It is true that video games have this kind of interesting, unique feature, which is that they are often very graphic these days with the graphic fidelity, and that they're interactive. That said, playing a violent video game is not going to make your child a violent child or person. There's mountains of evidence that says that is not true. That doesn't happen. But being reflective on the amount and the level of exposure you want your child to have for these kinds of things is really important, and to talk with them about that is important.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, I think that's a great point because I feel like it's so easy for someone to say video games and violence is causal. So because you play video games, that's why you are violent. And I think what that does is it kind of excuses the rest of us by being like, "Oh, you know what makes people violent? Violence."

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, it's easier to blame a video game than to... you know.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, hunger, poverty, a crazy political system.

 

Nathan Holbert:

So much easier to blame Call of Duty than to solve that.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, than to say it's a culmination of all of these other things that are happening in the landscape.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, 100%. And also, another side of this that I think often gets left on the table is whether your kid comes home and plays Call of Duty at home in your home, they are probably having conversations with their classmates and their friends about these games. I mean, you mentioned Grand Theft Auto. There was a time where everyone was talking about and playing Grand Theft Auto, and you kind of needed to know something about Grand Theft Auto to engage in those conversations, so kids did. They learned about it, they played it, whether it was at your house or a friend's house. And actually, that's again, kind of good for socialization to build ways to talk with friends about things that friends are interested in and that you're interested in, and engaging in that kind of larger social experience around these artifacts.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah. And I think media, books, and video games too are such an opportunity to engage in conversations with kids because those are imperfect materials made by imperfect people.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yes.

 

Haeny Yoon:

And so there is a lot to talk about and discuss around those things as well.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. And that's why my last point here is exactly what you're saying, you should play games with kids.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yes.

 

Nathan Holbert:

The question shouldn't be, "Which games should I let my kid play?" It's like, "What games can we play together?" It's fun, first of all, to play games with kids. It also gives you new conversations to have, it invites you to explore things that they're interested in, and it also invites you to have those conversations and questions about all sorts of issues or topics that might be important and hard to have without having that artifact to think with and talk with, to play games with kids.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, absolutely, play games with kids.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Do it, watch TV with kids, play games with kids. Okay. One more question for you.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Okay.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Should kids be reading before they even get to school? I have this neighbor whose kid is already reading and they're two years old, and should I be having my kid read?

 

Haeny Yoon:

Okay, I'm not even going to try to go around about here. No, your kids do not have to read before they come to school because my thing is to parents like, "Are you a teacher? Do you know how to teach reading? You're going to teach your kid how to read before they come to school?"

 

Nathan Holbert:

Cool.

 

Haeny Yoon:

I do not feel like that is a prerequisite to coming to school. I feel like they're out of all the other things that give kids anxiety into coming into a new space like school, I think the whole social readiness is probably much more important than reading readiness.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. It was a miracle that my kids were potty-trained when went to school.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah. I mean, think of how it's a scary experience to have to set foot into a school considering that all the rest of your time up until then, and you spend time at home with your parents.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, a whole full day away from mom and dad with all these new other kids, and teachers, and adults.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, exactly. My pro tip, yes, social readiness, potty-trained.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Don't worry about the reading. Got it.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, that's a little bit more important.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Fantastic. So these are just a few of the questions that you and I encounter that people like to ask us. And as we said before, I mean, I think these are hard questions, partly because people really intently want to do well by the young people in their lives, but they might not always be the right kinds of questions that they should be thinking about, right?

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, exactly. I'm not going to read this whole Little Prince quote because you made fun of me prior to this.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Well, that doesn't sound like me.

 

Haeny Yoon:

But I do love this. And the reason why I love this is because this quote is basically the idea that we as adults love to measure things and love to ask maybe sometimes the wrong questions. And so what it says is, "Grownups love figures. When you tell them you've made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, 'What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?' Instead, they demand, 'How old does he, how much does he weigh, how much money does his father make?'" And so those questions, there's an example of just different things that we ask about very superficial things about other people.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. I'm always asking my kids how much their friends weigh.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Anyway. But it goes on to say, only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about them.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Right.

 

Haeny Yoon:

And we know that that doesn't really measure a person.

 

Nathan Holbert:

That's right, that's right.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah. So maybe it's not about asking those questions, maybe it's thinking about things that we should measure, are better off asking like, "Do kids find joy? Are they creative? Are they finding places where they feel valued?"

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah.

 

Haeny Yoon:

So, yeah. And have experiences with them, take interest in them, play games with them.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Play games with kids.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Watch their TV shows, even though some of them are kind of annoying.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Sometimes they're annoying, but taking their interest seriously is such a hugely important thing.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yes.

 

Nathan Holbert:

And I think it's astonishing how hard it is for us adults to remember that. We are not just their protectors and providers and the person who makes their dinner and make sure their bed is comfortable, we are also people in their lives with relationships hopefully.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Exactly, yeah.

 

Nathan Holbert:

And part of building those relationships with a kid is the same way you build relationships with your friends and your partners is having meaningful conversations, talking about things that one another care about, engaging with them together. And we should be doing that with young people.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, exactly.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Nailed it.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah. Thank you for letting us pop off this week.

 

Nathan Holbert:

That was a nice pop off. It was good to talk about those questions.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Yes.

 

Nathan Holbert:

And before we leave, we want to encourage you if you get a chance, we have a survey on our website at tc.edu/popandplay. There's also a link to this survey in the show notes. Take a look at it, tell us what you're enjoying about the show, tell us what you'd like to see us do more. We'd love to hear from you.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Don't forget to share with your friends and subscribe on wherever you get your podcast.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. And season six, five? What's season are we on?

 

Haeny Yoon:

Five.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Season five

 

Haeny Yoon:

Is coming up very soon.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Very soon.

 

Haeny Yoon:

Stay tuned.

 

Nathan Holbert:

Check your dial. Bye.