The right to play in the digital era

In this chapter, I don’t examine the blockages and forms of unevenness that prevent children from being able to engage in digital forms of play; rather, I provide an overview of why digital play should be included as a right.1 I aim to demonstrate that the right to digital play has important stakes and that without intervention from policymakers, vulnerable populations (particularly children in the developing world) will remain the most likely to be excluded from participation in digital play. I approach this essay differently than Edward Castronova in his 2005 article “The Right to Play.” Castronova’s well-known essay in the New York Law School Law Review examines the fraught relationship between players and owners of MMORPGs. While his essay focuses on players’ rights in virtual worlds and on the ownership of avatars and digital property, I demonstrate why the activity of digital play should itself be protected. This involves approaching the issue of the right to play by examining existing discourses on digital citizenship, digital rights, and digital literacy that offer strategies for extending the right to play to include digital play.