They seem harmless enough - an elf at the center of a holiday game that has kids behaving and searching for their seasonal friend.
But a digital technology professor says that friend is more a fiend.
Laura Pinto and her co-author Selena Nemorin claim the Elf on the Shelf is getting children groomed for "increasingly intrusive (albeit whimsically packaged) modes of surveillance," the Washington Post reported.
Wait, what? The elf is teaching kids that surveillance is OK?
If you are not familiar with the tradition, parents plunk down about $30 for a book and small elf that will keep a watchful eye on the kids and report back their observations to Santa every night. Some families will move the elf to different vantage points to prove that he left his, or her, perch for the night to file the report, returning home the next morning.
According to their paper, "Who's the Boss," Pinto and Nemorin claim the "elf" is the one in charge, setting the rules that no one can touch the elf and that the elf can not move or speak when anyone in the house is awake. It is those rules and the dynamic of who is in charge that Pinto and Nemorin are concerned about.
Their research claimed that the difference between the elf tradition and other forms of play is that the child "role-plays a character or the child imagines herself within a play-world of the game, but the role play does not enter the child's real world as part of the game."
The elf on the other hand, has too many rules and the game goes on too long. The elf is ALWAYS watching, and reports back to Santa nightly.
Pinto and Nemorin, in "Who's the Boss," equate the Elf on the Shelf to an 18th century design for a model prison in which the prisoners assumed they were constantly being watched, leaving the person, or in the modern case the "elf's" child, always on guard, not sure if he or she is being monitored.
The pair take the comparison to the next level by claiming that since elves have been "adopted" in both homes and classrooms alike, they are possibly preparing future generations for constant surveillance without question.
The Elf on the Shelf was created by Atlanta teacher Chanda Bell and her mother, and another Atlanta teacher, Carol Aebersold. They are joined in the Elf business by Chanda's twin sister, Christa Pitts.
To read the complete paper, click here.
