Techniques of the tactile body: A cultural phenomenology of toddlers and mobile touchscreens

Abstract

A key dimension of young children's mobile media engagement and play centres on their embodied relations, and how these are shaped with and through the interfaces, materiality and mobility of haptic media. This article explores these embodied dimensions of young children's mobile media use, drawing on research from (1) ethnographic observation of young children's play practices in family homes, (2) analysis of videos of young children's tactile media interaction shared on YouTube and (3) analysis of user interface (UI) and mobile app developer literature, such as the 'Event Handling Guide for iOS', which encodes touchscreen interaction through the design constraints and possibilities of gesture input techniques. Taking as its starting point Marcel Mauss' famous reflection on body techniques, this article draws on past and present research on mobile technologies, tactility and everyday life, to explore what might be involved in developing a 'cultural phenomenology' of mobile touchscreens. This research and analysis reveals the emergence of what we term a haptic habitus or cultivation of embodied dispositions for touchscreen conduct and competence.

How young children’s play is shaped through common iPad applications: a study of 2 and 4–5 year-olds

“…Scholars have pointed to the sometimes illusory-gap between digital and physical play (e.g., Marsh et al 2016 ). Nansen and Wilken ( 2019 ) note that touchscreens and other artefacts are often ‘circulated around the home’ in everyday play activities. Many play activities are simultaneously embedded in both digital and physical space (Potter and Cowan 2020 ).…”

The relational ontology of mobile touchscreens and the body: Ambient proprioception and risk during COVID-19

“…28, 32). Similarly, Parisi suggests that beyond the “mundane” haptics that we experience today in mobile phones, wearables and games, future interfaces will at best be built on normative models that posit an impossibly universal body, and that “[g]iven touch's impossible complexity, any attempt to digitally remake it will be necessarily incomplete and fragmentary” ( Parisi, 2022 ). While we would agree with this view, it is worth noting that the perspectives of both neuroscientists and haptic technologists largely rely on a literal or positivist rendition of touch as a physical skin-to-skin or skin-to-device form of contact.…”

“…Mobile media are intimate, tactile, social and playful devices, and simultaneously acoustic, visual and haptic mediums, evoking emergent behaviors, gesturings and choreographies of the body (Nansen & Wilken, 2018;Richardson & Hjorth, 2017;Verhoeff & Cooley, 2014). The literal "handling" of mobile devices, manipulation or screen objects with our fingers makes users more affectively and haptically enmeshed with the affordances, enablements and constraints of the interface.…”

Digital placemaking and networked corporeality: Embodied mobile media practices in domestic space during Covid-19

“…As Wellner writes 'the domestication of cell phones might be considered paradoxical because cell phones are mostly used outside of the home, while domestication implies a strong connection to the home and the activities conducted within this domain ' (2016: 55). Yet mobile media are as ever-present in the home as they are in public spaces and integral to our domestic placemaking practices (Nansen and Wilken, 2019). Over a decade ago, Chan's (2008) study revealed that while mobile games may be played in non-domestic contexts, they are also often played in the private space of one's bedroom, and as noted, subsequent research has similarly identified how the mobile touchscreen has become a home-based portal for networked and colocated sociality and play (Hjorth and Richardson, 2014).…”