Before the Screen, the Body: Jiwasa, Play, and Decolonial Neuroscience of Childhood

From the Body to the Brain Bee: Decolonial Neuroscience for Latin American Teenagers

Before we talk about screens, maybe we need to return to a very simple scene.

A small child looks at someone.
Someone looks back.
The child babbles.
Someone responds.
The child points.
Someone follows the gesture.
The child falls.
Someone waits, helps, or simply stays close.
The child tries again.

That is where childhood begins to think.

It does not begin in the app.
It does not begin in the educational video.
It does not begin in the promise that a child will “learn faster” because they are exposed to many stimuli.

It begins in the body.
In the face.
In the voice.
On the floor.
In the lap.
In waiting.
In play.
In the response of another human being.

And maybe that is why this first blog in the series needs to begin with a sentence we will repeat many times:

Jiwasa: no one regulates alone all the time.

Revista Yvirá, connected to the UNESCO Chair in Science for Education, published an important article on early childhood in the digital age, calling attention to the need for conscious, mediated, and balanced screen use, without losing face-to-face play, social interaction, and human bonds. (Yvirá)

Our BrainLatam2026 question begins exactly here:

what happens when an entire childhood starts being regulated more by screens than by present bodies?

We do not need to answer this with guilt.
Nor with moralism.
Nor by turning parents, teachers, and caregivers into enemies.

The question is larger.

What kind of world are we offering a child to feel?
What kind of territory does the child touch?
What kind of face responds to their face?
What kind of time do we allow for them to make mistakes, repeat, fall, laugh, wait, and play?

A screen is not only a screen: it occupies a place in the body

When a child is in front of a screen, they are not only “watching content.”

They are not looking at something else.
They are not hearing another voice.
They are not touching another material.
They are not negotiating with another child.
They are not waiting for their turn.
They are not getting frustrated with a real object.
They are not inventing a rule.
They are not entering a conversation that was not already prepared.

This may be the most delicate point.

The problem is not only counting screen minutes.
The deeper question is:

what is the screen replacing in that moment?

Is it replacing conversation?
Is it replacing sleep?
Is it replacing physical affection?
Is it replacing eating together?
Is it replacing the street, the backyard, the park, the circle, dance, body, mess, silence?

A 2024 study published in JAMA Pediatrics followed children from 12 to 36 months and found a negative association between screen time and parent-child talk: higher screen time was linked to fewer adult words heard, fewer child vocalizations, and fewer conversational turns between adults and children. (JAMA Pediatrics)

We can read this finding simply: when the screen comes in too much, conversation may go out.

But in our language, something even deeper happens: when conversation goes out, Jiwasa weakens.

Because a child does not learn language as if downloading a file.
A child learns language by entering a living field of presence.

Someone speaks.
The child feels.
The child tries.
Someone responds.
The child adjusts.
Someone smiles.
The child repeats.
Someone reacts with surprise.
The child changes.

This is how the brain begins to discover that to exist is to participate.

Play is a form of science before science

Maybe we have become used to treating play as a break.

The child studies, then plays.
The child learns, then plays.
The child does something “serious,” then plays.

But what if we reverse this?

What if play is one of the first forms of research?

When a child stacks objects, they are testing gravity, force, balance, and frustration.
When they run after another child, they are testing distance, speed, intention, and limits.
When they invent a story, they are testing memory, imagination, language, and emotion.
When they wait for their turn, they are testing self-regulation.
When they lose a game, they are testing their own body in the face of frustration.

Play is a laboratory.
It just does not look like one because it has no lab coat.

A 2022 study on play-based early childhood classrooms observed how teachers support children’s self-regulation in play contexts, showing that play and adult mediation can participate in regulatory development. (ScienceDirect)

A 2025 systematic review on emotional self-regulation in preschool also reinforces that early education is fundamentally relational: children’s emotional self-regulation develops through interactions, bonds, and educational environments that support social and academic development. (MDPI)

Here we can pause and notice:

self-regulation is not born in isolation.
It is born as co-regulation.

First, someone regulates with the child.
Then the child begins to carry that rhythm inside.

First, someone helps the child wait.
Then the child learns to wait.

First, someone names the fear.
Then the child begins to recognize the fear.

First, someone holds time.
Then the child begins to feel their own time.

That is why Jiwasa is not only a beautiful idea.
It is a key for thinking about childhood, school, family, neuroscience, and public policy.

Zone 2: when the body can learn without defending itself all the time

A child does not need a perfect world to develop.

A child needs a world that is safe enough to explore.

This is important: safety does not mean the absence of challenge.
Safety means the possibility of trying without being destroyed by error.

In BrainLatam2026 language, we call this Zone 2.

Zone 2 is when the body can become curious.
It can make mistakes.
It can return.
It can try again.
It can play without being constantly on alert.

When a child is in Zone 2, they do not need to spend all their energy defending themselves.
There is energy left for language, bonding, imagination, gesture, attention, and learning.

UNICEF states that experiences from birth to school entry have a profound impact on physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development, highlighting the first 1,000 days as a sensitive period for growth and brain development. (UNICEF)

If we take this seriously, early childhood stops being only a private family matter and becomes a matter of State, city, school, territory, and future.

It is not enough to tell families: “reduce screens.”
We need to ask:

Is there a safe park?
Is there a school with time for play?
Is there a less exhausted adult?
Is there food?
Is there community bonding?
Is there public policy that allows presence?

Without this, criticism of screens becomes an unfair criticism of people who are already overloaded.

Decolonial Neuroscience needs to avoid this trap.

This is not about blaming the tired mother, the working father, the overwhelmed teacher, the grandmother taking care of everyone, or the family using screens just to survive the day.

The question is systemic:

why have we created a society where the screen has become a substitute caregiver for so many childhoods?

APUS: territory also educates

A child does not develop only inside the brain.

A child develops on the ground they step on.
In the house they move through.
In the school where they play.
In the street they can or cannot cross.
In the park that exists or does not exist.
In the heat, the noise, the violence, the care, the tree, the concrete, the water, the food.

This is APUS: body-territory, extended proprioception, the perception that the body does not end at the skin.

When a child runs, jumps, falls, dances, climbs, crouches, pushes, pulls, hugs, hides, and appears again, they are forming bodily maps of the world. They are learning distance, weight, texture, rhythm, danger, trust, and possibility.

When childhood is reduced too much to screens, APUS narrows.

The eyes receive a lot.
The finger slides a lot.
But the whole body experiences little.

And maybe we need to say this carefully:

a screen can show the world,
but it does not replace the world.

It can show a tree,
but it does not replace climbing, touching, smelling, feeling fear, balancing the foot, and looking from above.

It can show a circle,
but it does not replace the body waiting for the rhythm of another body.

It can show a dance,
but it does not replace shame, laughter, trying, and discovering that the body also thinks.

Childhood captured by the algorithm

Here we enter a more political point.

Screens are not only neutral tools.
Many digital platforms are designed to capture attention, extend time spent, and transform behavior into data.

For an adult, this is already difficult.
For a small child, who is still forming self-regulation, language, and bonding, it is even more delicate.

A 2025 scoping review in Frontiers in Developmental Psychology analyzed studies on children from 0 to 36 months and reinforced that the effects of screen time on development need to be approached with nuance, considering age, context, content, child characteristics, and adult mediation. (Frontiers)

This nuance matters.

We do not need to fall into two extremes:

“every screen destroys”
or
“technology is inevitable, so nothing can be done.”

The more mature position is different:

technology needs to come after the body, not in place of the body.

First the face.
First the ground.
First the hand.
First play.
First the bond.
First the territory.

Then, yes, technology can be mediated, discussed, understood, and used as a tool.

But when the screen arrives before presence, before living language, before bodily play, before shared self-regulation, it can reorganize childhood around capture.

And here Decolonial Neuroscience needs to be firm:

we do not want children against technology.
We want children who are not governed by algorithms before learning to feel their own bodies.

The question we can take to the Brain Bee

If a teenager reads this text and becomes interested in neuroscience, maybe they can notice something beautiful:

the Brain Bee does not need to begin with a question far away from life.

It can begin like this:

why does a child learn better when someone looks back?
how does play regulate the body?
what happens in the brain when a child waits for their turn?
how does screen time change conversations between adults and children?
how does territory participate in attention?

These questions are already neuroscience.

We could imagine a BrainLatam2026 study comparing three situations:

a child playing freely with another child;
a child playing with adult mediation;
a child watching a screen passively.

The question would not only be: “which activity teaches more?”
The question would be:

in which situation does more Jiwasa appear?

We could observe conversational turns, gestures, shared gaze, waiting, initiative, frustration, and return to calm. In future research, we could also use EEG, fNIRS, eye-tracking, respiration, GSR, and HRV/RMSSD to investigate attention, co-regulation, and autonomic signals in natural play contexts.

The BrainLatam2026 hypothesis would be simple:

when there is a present body, human response, and shared territory, the child has more chance of entering Zone 2.

And Zone 2 is where curiosity breathes.

DREX Cidadão: childhood as the metabolism of the State

If every child is a living unit of the State, early childhood care cannot depend only on the luck of being born into a family with time, income, parks, good schools, and available adults.

Here, DREX Cidadão appears as a metaphor and as a proposal for public metabolism.

Just as a cell needs energy to participate in the body, a child needs material and affective conditions to participate in society.

This includes food, school, bonding, safety, territory, culture, play, health, presence, and protection against early attention capture.

This is not charity.
It is systemic intelligence.

A society that cares for early childhood reduces future suffering.
It reduces future violence.
It reduces future school failure.
It reduces future algorithmic capture.

And more than reducing harm, it increases possibility.

A child who plays can become a curious teenager.
A curious teenager can find the Brain Bee.
The Brain Bee can open a path to research.
Research can return to the territory as a fairer, more embodied, more Latin American science.

Closing: maybe we are only remembering

Maybe this text is not saying something completely new.

Maybe it is only remembering something the body already knows.

Before the screen, there was the face.
Before content, there was presence.
Before performance, there was play.
Before the word, there was gesture.
Before science, there was curiosity.
Before the Brain Bee, there was a child trying to understand the world with the whole body.

A Decolonial Neuroscience of childhood begins when we give children back the right to feel the world before being captured by it.

And if we listen calmly, maybe the sentence returns again:

Jiwasa: no one regulates alone all the time.

Not the child.
Not the teenager.
Not the teacher.
Not the family.
Not society.

We learn together.
We regulate together.
We think together.

And maybe this is how a new Latin American generation can reach neuroscience: not by escaping the body, but by beginning with it.

Post-2021 References

Brushe, M. E. et al. (2024). Screen Time and Parent-Child Talk When Children Are Aged 12 to 36 Months. JAMA Pediatrics.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2815514

Takahashi, I. et al. (2023). Screen Time Exposure at Age 1 Year and Developmental Delay at Ages 2 and 4 Years. JAMA Pediatrics.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2808593

Sticca, F.; Brauchli, V.; Lannen, P. (2025). Screen on = development off? A systematic scoping review and a developmental psychology perspective on the effects of screen time on early childhood development. Frontiers in Developmental Psychology.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/developmental-psychology/articles/10.3389/fdpys.2024.1439040/full

Pyle, A. et al. (2022). Supporting children’s self-regulation development in play-based kindergarten classrooms. International Journal of Educational Research.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0883035522001343

Nilfyr, K.; Plantin Ewe, L. (2025). Thriving Children’s Emotional Self-Regulation in Preschool: A Systematic Review Discussed from an Interactionist Perspective. Education Sciences.
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/15/2/137

UNICEF. (2023). Early Childhood Development: UNICEF Vision for Every Child.
https://www.unicef.org/

Linhares, M. B. M.; Branco, M. S. S.; Souza, M. T. C. C. A primeira infância na era digital. Revista Yvirá / UNESCO Chair in Science for Education.
https://yvira.org/artigo/a-primeira-infancia-na-era-digital/