Performing sedentary behaviors: Studying children's screen practices at home as affective assemblages

Abstract

Growing concerns about children's sedentary behavior and health have drawn attention to their screen behaviors at home. However, this work leans on a deterministic and essentializing view of children, screen devices, and the home, such that it tends to equate any time spent on screens with being sedentary, device presence with increased use where children are passive receptors of screen influence, and the home as a place where parents control their children's screen use. This paper shows instead that children's screen use at home needs to be understood as a sociomaterial assemblage that is dynamic and contingent, and that affect is central to these assemblages. The paper draws on a mixed-methods exploratory study conducted with 6–12 year old children in their homes in Sweden, using accelerometry and observational data to note the children's movement behaviors as well as their screen activities. The findings show that children are both sedentary and active while using screens, questioning the idea of screen time as necessarily sedentary. Moreover, children's screen practice assemblages at home are composed of various elements that come together in dynamic and highly situated ways, challenging the device and parental influence narrative. The paper shows how we need to pay attention to the ways in which these assemblages come together and children's actual performances of screen practices in order to move beyond the predominant discourse surrounding screen time.