So many of the toys being touted for December’s traditional gift-giving are chip-enhanced, talking, moving or playing music on their own and reducing kids to mere button pushers. Or they feature commercial characters from media juggernauts, imbued with predetermined personalities and storylines that encourage children to copy, not create. Both deprive children of opportunities to imagine, initiate, problem-solve or express themselves.
I am a psychologist whose work focuses on tracking the impact of tech and commercialism on children’s well-being. The contrast I observed between Arielle’s experience and that of several toddlers I had met not long before at a local day care center was profound. The children were on the floor, surrounded by the kinds of bestselling toys marketers today promote as “interactive” because they move and emit sounds at the push of a button.
