Where Do Childhood Games Come From?
The other day, I was doing work in the living room of my apartment as my housemates were having a very nostalgic conversation. One mentioned a game they used to play as a child called “Slide.” For those that aren’t familiar with this game or that never knew its name, it’s essentially a coordinated “clapping” game between you and a partner in which you clap your hands against the other person in a specific, coordinated sequence. The other housemate did not initially recognize the name of this game but once it was described to her, she immediately recalled it and the two began playing, going faster and faster. I too had played this game before and I began to wonder, where did this game come from? Who originally came up with this game and how did it become so popular that my housemates and I, growing up independently of each other in opposite corners of the country, all came to learn this game. I stopped my housemates and asked them where they had learned it from. This certainly was not something taught to us in teachers by school. We had all learned it from other kids. But where had those other kids learned it from? Maybe their siblings or parents passing it down? We also figured that summer camps might be a source where camp counselors may introduce the game as a tradition.
It’s not just with “slide” but also with lots of other silly childhood games we played but were too naive to think about where they came from. I looked online to see if anyone else had been thinking about this phenomenon and stumbled across the following conversation on Reddit on r/explainlikeimfive. The post is titled “How do children all over the world come up with the same games without anyone telling them?” The user who posted it uses the “floor is lava” game as an example. Other examples included the “sweet and sour” game where you wave at the car behind you and if the driver waves back they are “sweet” and if the driver doesn’t they are “sour.” People from Canada, USA, Brazil, Australia all related to playing this game. People from all over the world seemingly just start playing this game independently. Users on the thread proposed theories for this phenomenon. One popular theory was simply that “great minds think alike.” For the “floor is lava” game, it’s possible to see how it’s easy to put the pieces together once they are in place. In other words, if children are around furniture near each other (the pieces in place), then it’s really a matter of time before they create some variant of the “floor is lava” game and trying to jump from one place to another without touching the floor (putting the pieces together). Others pointed at tradition and the games being passed down through generations.
I agree that both of these theories make sense and I certainly don’t disagree with them. However, I feel that there is a missing piece that requires thinking in the context of networks. Maybe some parents pass a game down to their children, and maybe some children come up with games independently. Yet, if my parents never were introduced to this game, and I never came up with it on my own, how did information of the game reach me? This can be explained by diffusion in networks. In class, we talked about modeling this with a coordination game. And to me, this makes a lot of sense. If I see the friends I’m surrounded by are playing this game, and the payoff is having fun and being hip in elementary school, then I am likely to adopt this game. Then maybe another one of my friends that did not yet know about the game sees me and our mutual friends playing it. Then they might adopt as well. Ever since these little games were invented, whether by one person or children everywhere independently, these games have been diffusing through networks and transcending generations, grade levels, and countries, making their way to friend groups and networks on a local scale.