Don't Use Your Words!: Children's Emotions in a Networked World

Children are taught to control their feelings through cultural production, such as drawings, fan art, memes, YouTube videos, dance moves, and conversations while gaming online. Dont Use Your Words! challenges the norms by highlighting the ways kids express their feelings in specific contexts, such as immigration policy and electoral politics. Juffer argues that kids have the agency to answer for themselves about what it feels like to be a kid.

\n Format: Hardback
\n Length: 304 pages
\n Publication date: 28 May 2019
\n Publisher: New York University Press
\n

Children are taught to control their feelings and resist emotional management through cultural production. In today's digital age, young kids communicate with each other through social media, creating a shared language that challenges parental, educational, and media expectations to name and control their emotions. Children's television programming has provided a therapeutic space for processing emotions like anger, but it has also enforced normative structures of feeling that limit the intensity and range of children's affective experiences.

"Don't Use Your Words!" is a project that seeks to challenge these norms by highlighting how kids express their feelings through cultural productions such as drawings, fan art, memes, YouTube videos, dance moves, and online gaming conversations. The project focuses on children between the ages of five and nine and examines these productions in specific contexts, including immigration policy and electoral politics.

Jane Juffer, the project's creator, argues against the mainstream tendency to speak on behalf of children. She believes that kids have the agency to answer for themselves: what does it feel like to be a kid? "Don't Use Your Words!" provides a platform for children to express their emotions and experiences through art, allowing them to challenge the dominant narratives and create their own understanding of childhood.

The project's website features a collection of children's artwork, videos, and interviews that showcase their creative expressions and emotional experiences. It also provides resources for parents, educators, and policymakers to better understand the ways in which children communicate and express themselves through culture.

In conclusion, "Don't Use Your Words!" is a powerful project that challenges the norms of emotional management and encourages children to express their feelings through cultural production. By highlighting the ways in which kids communicate and express themselves, the project provides a platform for them to challenge the dominant narratives and create their own understanding of childhood. It is a reminder that children are capable of agency and that their voices should be heard and valued in shaping the world around them.

\n Weight: 574g\n
Dimension: 161 x 237 x 18 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9781479831746\n \n