LEGO report on children at play

It’ll come as no surprise to find that the way that children play has changed over the last few years.

As the 15th anniversary of the launch of the Mindstorms robotics kit approaches LEGO commissioned a report into the way in which children’s play has changed. There’s a nice infographic summarising the results. Some interesting factiods include:

• Kids have much less free time available to them these days.
• There are an average of 12 apps on the mobile devices used by kids
• 50 per cent of children over 5 access the Internet every day

I can’t say the results are Earth-shattering, but they are interesting. That said, I’m not sure that I buy into the conclusion that technologically advanced robots mean “Children will share an increasing amount of their humanity with their toys”. In my experience you don’t get much more of an emotional connection than that of a young child with their favourite toy whether that toy is a doll, a stuffed bear or a favourite car. But that’s all about imagination and an emotional response, it’s not about a robotic response.