The Importance of Play and Imagination in the Digital Age.

Play offers wide-ranging opportunities for children’s holistic development, well-being and learning

Creative exploration and imagination are essential in harnessing the true human potential in thinking, understanding and production.

Creativity is an intrinsic part of being human. Imagination and creative expressions highlight the level of human development an individual or a society has achieved.

Creativity plays a key role not just in childhood development but also in entrepreneurial endeavours and economic progress.

From artistic expression to design and construction to problem solving and sustainable development, human progress at every level requires creative thinking and imagination.

New ideas and concepts ensure continued human progress. Creative exploration and imagination are essential in harnessing the true human potential in thinking, understanding and production.

In every age and era, human civilisations have faced new economic, social and technical challenges and those who have faced the reality through the tools of creativity have been most successful in overcoming challenges.

The challenges that humanity faces today also call for greater imagination and creativity in finding appropriate solutions. Hence, we need to provide our children with the environment that encourages imagination and creative exploration. This can only happen if the children find greater freedom to play and pretend.

Digital delusion

This is all the more essential in the digital age when screen obsession has assumed pandemic proportions and since its drawbacks are not immediately noticeable, parents don’t react to it the way they had reacted to the Covid19 pandemic.

Humans have been designed to be physically as well as intellectually active to maintain a higher state of wellbeing. With the modern school atmosphere largely promoting a sedentary lifestyle due to the way modern education has been designed, children have become more vulnerable to physical, mental and spiritual imbalance.

Academic obsession

In such an educational atmosphere, it is obvious that most parents obsess over academic progress for their children, which means children spend less and less time in creative endeavours and playful imagination even at home.

This is a massive challenge that is standing as an obstacle in the holistic development of modern children.

In order to develop a future generation that is not just responsive to the needs of the time but also has the ability to creatively engage with the world and come up with innovative solutions, we need to make greater investment in the creative imagination of our children.

Play is the way

One of the ways creativity can be developed is through creative play. Whether it is playing with toy bricks, clay, blocks, drawing, paper craft or pretence play, using imagination to create something new provides a crucial opportunity to develop essential, transferable skills.

Apart from balanced human development, creativity and playful imagination also plays a huge role in developing innovative skills among the youth, helping them provide entrepreneurial solutions as well as find meaningful jobs.

Play offers wide ranging opportunities for children’s holistic development, well-being and learning. Play can take varied forms, outdoor play, indoor pay, imaginative play or pretence. Different types of play can have different implications for child development and learning.

Playful experiences provide children with opportunities to engage with others and learn in enjoyable ways. Recognising and building on the power of playfulness and play can support more meaningful and lifelong educational experiences for all.

Unstructured, freely chosen and child-directed outdoor play contributes to health, development and well-being.

But, how?

But, in this digital age when children are increasingly drawn towards the screens, how can we foster opportunities for creative play?

This is where the role of parents and family comes into play. For the children to be physically and imaginatively active, families should ensure a playful and creative atmosphere at home. An atmosphere where children feel at home and don’t feel burdened.

For this to happen, parents should take active interest and participation in the lives of their children. This involves more than taking care of their need or providing for them.

Family

Active parenting primarily means spending more time with children either playing with them or taking them to games. It also means finding common interests or cultivating interests in activities that your children are interested in.

Historically, children always spent most of their time with their family members and that is where they thrive and that is where they are at their natural best.

This needs to be valued and nurtured. Relationships with parents and siblings prove crucial in developing sound and socially evolved personalities. The best way to do this to ensure children have someone to play with at home.

Neighbourhood

Apart from the family, having a nurturing neighbourhood where children feel confident to engage with other children and spend time playing in the playgrounds or streets is highly important.

A safe and enriching neighbourhood gives children the opportunity to explore and creatively engage with others.

If we look at many creative masterpieces or the lives of past innovators, we will see that all their great works were influenced by the experiences in the neighbourhood or their direct exposure to the nature.

Safety

When designing activities, consideration for the safety of the children should be given utmost importance.

The educational value of the activity and the ability of the activity to hold their attention long enough should also be considered.

Getting children hooked on to something that is of high educational value, while keeping them safe is the key.

Parents are in the best position to know the interests and aptitudes of their children, hence they should design the games and activities drawing from their psychology, aptitude as well as their likes and dislikes.

Curiosity

Children are curious by nature and they love to explore. Once you get their attention and they get pulled into an activity they can happily spend hours engaged in it. Hence, playing with their curiosity is highly essential in designing the activities.

Once they get into the zone or get lost in an activity, they naturally develop important life skills such as resilience, persistence, focus etc. These skills developed over a period of time come in handy for the rest of the life.

Children naturally learn by observing and constantly try their hands at different things. Hence, it is also essential to ensure an element of novelty in activities.

Inventive

At an elementary age, children learn best by expressing their ideas through play and art. Younger children learn the best through play and these learnings stay with them through out their lives and form the foundation of their later learning.

However, with greater exposure to gadgets and addiction to readily available entertainment on the Internet, the attention spans are getting constantly reduced. This is the reason why we need to be highly inventive when designing engagement programmes for children.

While designing the activities, priority should be given to ideas that make children use their various faculties of intellect as well as senses.

Unique

The away a child sees the world and learns from his/her surroundings is different from their siblings or other children around them. 

It is an established fact that children express what they see the best through play, they imitate what they see and repeat it, hence letting them play is essential, particularly at the elementary age.

This is the reason why, experts consider right to play as fundamental to the children’s balanced growth and well being. And this is the reason why the United Nations has enshrined playtime as a universal children’s right.

Benefits

Among the key benefits of play include, increased powers of concentration, better analytical thinking, better creativity, greater social engagement, better negotiation and problem solving skills, strengthening of the human bond, better expression and dialogue as well as the ability to overcome of challenges.

Now that you know how important play is, don’t take it lightly, it’s no child play!