PLAY AND CHILDREN'S CULTURES IN CONTEMPORARY TIMES

Abstract

This article analyzes play as a cultural experience within a childhood shaped by the transformations brought about by digital culture, considering the relationships among children's cultures, playfulness, experience, and education. It proceeds from the understanding that childhood is not a homogeneous or universal condition but a historical and sociocultural construct in which children actively participate in the production and transformation of culture. From this perspective, play transcends the dimensions of mere entertainment or a learning tool, constituting a privileged form of cultural appropriation, re-elaboration, and production. By altering the ways cultural goods are produced, circulated, and appropriated, digital culture has become part of the contemporary conditions shaping children's cultures; it expands repertoires and languages ​​while also introducing forms of acceleration, constant stimulation, consumption, and attention capture. This study is a theoretical-philosophical inquiry with a qualitative approach, conducted through a literature review and guided by the critical-dialectical perspective of Critical Theory. It argues that the challenge for early childhood education lies neither in distancing children from digital culture nor in incorporating it uncritically, but rather in ensuring pedagogical conditions that allow the childhood experience to remain open to imagination, creation, interaction, and the critical appropriation of culture.