PLAYFUL ARTISTIC INVENTIVENESS

the use of mobile phones by children in the daily life of early childhood education

Abstract

In this article, we seek to understand the meanings that children aged four to six attribute to mobile phones in the context of Early Childhood Education, based on their interactions and playful inventions in times of cyberculture. The research was conducted in 2023 at a Municipal Early Childhood Education Unit in Niterói/RJ, with the participation of fifteen children. Inspired by the ethnographic methodology, the investigation used conversations, participant observations, photographs, videos, and a field diary. The study is connected to contemporary debates on childhood and technology, especially in light of Law No. 15.100/2025.The results show that the mobile phone is re-signified and transformed into a symbolic artifact of expression and creation, being integrated into fictitious games, drawings, simulations, and fabulations, and incorporated as a language of play and of contemporary digital childhood. Such performative practices challenge regulatory discourses on the use of mobile phones in childhood, pointing to modes of subjectivation and sensitive experiences that involve pedagogical mediation. We conclude that, far from a passive relationship with technological artifacts, children develop expressive, social, and cognitive uses that reconfigure pedagogical bonds and ways of existing in everyday school life.