Paper short abstract:

Our paper examines how social media and virtual world building tools have been used innovatively and independently by children and young people, during the global pandemic, to adapt cultural practices, creating ‘new’ traditions and inclusive celebratory forms, meaningful to them.

Paper long abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic, with its accompanying curtailments on social mixing, has also affected life-cycle and seasonal celebrations; typically a time for community, family and friends. Narratives of loss around children’s pandemic experience(s) acknowledge the impact of restrictions on cultural and family celebrations, reflected in popular reports of children’s and parents anxieties over the more child-centred aspects of these festivities: that playful festive and folkloric performances risk being disrupted.

These discourses can overlook how some children have responded to these circumstances, employing digital technologies and computer games to create online social celebrations and commemorations in virtual spaces. Drawing on auto-ethnographic data alongside contributions to the Play Observatory project’s survey of children’s play during COVID-19, we explore how children and young people have innovatively adapted cultural practices.

By analysing child-devised events, including digital Christmas gift-giving, and a birthday party played out on Minecraft, we examine how some children have explored and exploited the affordances of games and social media platforms to connect with friends, family and community. We consider how they have adapted customs and created ‘new’ traditions meaningful to them, and how these spaces offer children freedom from offline restrictions while functioning as extensions of their everyday worlds.

We question whether the pandemic has provided an opportunity to discover what aspects of contemporary celebrations resonate with children when they have free reign to create their own celebratory forms: what is omitted, included and added, and whether these ‘new’ traditions might inform post-pandemic cultural celebrations.