The ROI of Play: Girls' Immaterial Labor, Smart Toys, and the Digital Economy

Abstract

The paper probes how toys obscure the line between work and play in the twenty-first century by illuminating the ways in which smart toys elicit immaterial forms of labor from girls during their playtime. Drawing on the work of critical communications scholars who posit that media audiences provide free labor, it contributes an analysis of how smart toys put girls to work when toy companies exploit girls' creativity and social connections to generate new revenue, harness valuable data, and secure free content. When framed as immaterial labor, seemingly benign play activities can be reinterpreted as value-generating work for toy companies that unequally benefits the industry and does not compensate girls for the value they produce. Finally, this paper posits that digital labor in girlhood may ultimately contribute to the exploitation of young women through internships and other forms of precarious labor associated with the digital economy.