Digital Backyard

Definition

Digital backyard is a term used to describe the transition of exploratory youth culture from the analog backyard space to the digital space. This is a tendency brought on by the fact that many families live in smaller spaces with less backyard space, spread out by geographic distance from friend groups. Playing together online is a distributed social network is a new form of backyard play.

In digital backyard play, children explore the extents and limits and offerings of a digital space vs. the analog space during adolescence. The new adolescence when connected. Using existent structures and experimenting with them. Going above and beyond to connect in new ways or use existent structures for humorous games, pranks and challenges. Challenging others, as kids would do in the wilderness of the backyard during frontier settling, to push each other's limits, understanding what their own bodies can do, experiencing dangers and excitement, and exploring and discovering new things, their limits, and how they work.