Bad television, unhealthy computers? Children’s mapping of health, fun and morality

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article aims to examine the meanings that Polish children (age 8–11) attribute to computers, television, or smartphones, in the context of health. Basing on childhood studies literature and the concept of healthscape I show how children include electronic media, as material and symbolic objects, in health discourses. In children’s worldviews these objects meet with healthy food and fit culture, as elements of healthscapes. The healthscape infrastructure allows children to simultaneously adopt different viewpoints and moral orders in the field of health. It could seem that the ‘perfect’ child would be a self-controlling child who never watches television or plays computer games, and who eats only healthy food. But this expectation contradicts another one, according to which children should be wild, free, and disobedient. Children need to navigate between contradictory viewpoints, and they need to find balance and a way to create their own identity therein.