Are Toys Disappearing from Our Homes?
By: Diana Bello Aristizábal
A couple of weeks ahead of Christmas, what will children find under the tree? Video game consoles and cellphones or will they still get good old-fashioned toys? That is the question we ask ourselves in this newsroom after realizing technology has taken over homes in such a way that toys seem to have taken a backseat.
It’s our responsibility as teachers to prevent them from disappearing,” says María Victoria Valdivia, a daycare teacher in charge of kids between the ages of 3 and 5. For the educator, cars, dolls, balls or blocks are essential to develop skills in early childhood and are the gateway to learn about the world.
The actual problem, she says, is that parents are giving in to children’s pressure of using devices, highly addictive by nature, instead of encouraging family conversations or making them participants in daily tasks such as doing the grocery shopping list.
As a result, children today are less capable of keeping conversations and have a hard time solving conflicts. In her line of work, despite watching very young children, there is a 50-50 ratio between parents who expose their children to technology and those who don’t. “It hurts to see how some put an iPad in front of their kids even to eat. Apps can be very useful to learn numbers and colors, but the exposition to them shouldn’t be recurrent.”
Technology, an ally in the right measure
When it comes to choosing between toys and electronic devices, the stances among families are varied and some see certain advantages in the latter. Adys Tibocha, a mom of two girls, Elena, 5, and Gabriela, 14, says that her eldest daughter gave up toys when she was around 12.
“As a child, she loved dolls and playing doctor, at 11 I bought her a Nintendo Switch that she started using at 12, at 13 she began to get interested in board games, and until recently she had her first mobile phone,” Adys says.
Nintendo has been the perfect excuse for having family time because although Gabriela likes it less and less due to the time she devotes to talking with her friends on the phone, it’s still one of the activities they do the most together along with the rest of the bunch: Elena, Gabriela, Camilo (dad) and her.
“The eldest really likes music and art, she plays the piano and paints very well. On her birthday, she asks for props for her instruments, stuff to paint, and headphones or online games. The youngest is into stories, stuffed animals, dolls and she draws, her technology use is limited to family time with the Nintendo and sporadic Tablet games on the weekends.”
In her opinion, toys will never fade away from homes and will continue to be important for her youngest daughter as they help her develop skills that technology would never. However, she thinks that technology can be useful for difficult situations such as waiting at a doctor’s office with children. “I don’t agree with raising children without any devices because it’s much harder for parents.”
Sergio Ovalle, dad of Samuel, 11, says his son no longer plays with toys. “We have some Legos that we play with together.” Nevertheless, he spends his free time playing computer games, especially Dragon Ball and Star Wars, and when he was younger, he used to play with a Nintendo Switch console.
Samuel had toys until he was 4 or 5 years old, and his favorite ones were dinosaurs and action figures from movies like Toy Story. “He got bored of toys and started spending more time with kids from school who talked about video games, that was one of the reasons he became interested in it.”
He believes that probably 2 out of 10 children will play with toys in the future. “Those two will be isolated from the rest. I mean, my son’s friends don’t talk about action figures, they talk about video games and the kid who doesn’t like them will feel lonely because they won’t understand the conversation.” He would like to take his son to play outside more often, but he says there are almost no children playing in parks and Samuel would be on his own.
Ytve Guerrera’s eldest son, 11-year-old Nicolás, also learned about video games from other children. “He took his first steps in Roblox (online video game platform) swayed by some very close friends of his. As a child, he was more obsessive and didn’t want to stop, then, in fourth grade, he grew out of it when his friends stopped playing, but now since my nephew in Spain plays, Nicolás is back at it,” says Ytve.
He doesn’t play freely, but with a set time limit of one hour per day on weekdays and a couple more on the weekends. As for the youngest, 8-year-old Alberto, he has not used an iPad for several months now as his parents noticed it’s notoriously difficult for him to let go of technology.
But Nicolás, just like his brother, hasn’t left aside toys and other activities not related to screens. He loves reading, playing basketball, soccer, baseball and tennis, building Legos and puzzles, playing with Star Wars swords with Alberto and the board game Checkers with his dad. Alberto plays with Pokémon balls, Batman and Flash dolls, and builds battery trains.
“Parents don’t play with their children, and children don’t interact as much with other minors, which makes them unaware of how to play alone. If we don’t realize how important is for adults to play with children, toys could disappear. We cannot depend on devices to entertain or calm our children,” Ytve says.
Laura Álvarez has had a similar experience with her children Julia, 11, and Pablo, 13. “My daughter is still very girly, thank God, and that’s why she really likes collectible stuffed animals, wooden toys in geometric shapes, magnets, drawing and she loves Hello Kitty, but lately she has begun to want a small contribution in Roblox to buy her avatar all the things that she likes,” Laura says.
Despite this, technology is not a problem at home due to lack of free time. “This year, she started the sixth grade and is extremely busy with school, so when she is not on the computer doing homework, she goes to flamenco academy. On the weekends, she spends time playing Roblox, but when we tell her to stop, she does other things.”
In Julia’s case, devices have helped her become more creative and not only to get involved in trendy games. Her mother claims her tablet is full of drawing apps, an activity she enjoys and that allows her to release emotions, and she uses a mobile phone only to talk with her parents.
She doesn’t believe children will ever lose contact with toys despite the abundance of “Tablet Kids”, as Julia refers to today’s children, according to Laura. She states toys will evolve and become increasingly interactive. “I am in many mom groups, and some parents are fans of wooden toys and think that manual activities are essential for strengthening the brain. Toys will not go out of style.”
Time to play
Although technology has given us a lot to human beings, some parents consider that in childhood toys should come first. This is the case of Adriana Uribe, mother of Nicolás, 8, who got her son used to not grabbing devices to entertain himself. She plans to never purchase video games and a cellphone for her child only when he turns 13.
“Since kindergarten, children own a mobile phone, a tablet or a Nintendo Switch console. Obviously, due to that influence, he asks me for those things a lot,” says Adriana, who thinks the danger of technology is that with Google, children can access any type of content. “Parents don’t even bother with parental control.”
Nicolás is in soccer, chess and swimming classes and he really likes Pokémon, Transformers, puzzles, which he puts together with his mother, and board games such as Rummikub, Chutes and Ladders, Dominoes, cards and UNO. “Children never pick these games as their first choice, but I take the games out and get them engaged. It’s a matter of spending time with them and redirecting them.”
Regarding the potential disappearance of toys from homes, she believes that’s unlikely to happen, but for parents will be increasingly difficult to fight against overexposure to technology, especially with the artificial intelligence boom that is going to be normalized in kids’ lives. “It’s not that they are naturally inclined towards technology, it’s more that parents give them an iPad to take a break themselves, and kids then go crazy when you take them away.”
Alejandro, 11, and son of Liliana Lárez, has not stopped liking toys one bit. He loves Legos and even the ones aimed at adults. “He sits for two days to put them together and he doesn’t take a break, until he is done,” says Liliana. Also puzzles, word searches, crossword puzzles and board games like Jenga and Parcheesi.
As for screens, Alejandro has to earn time on them to be spent on the weekends only with good behavior. Liliana implemented a coin system that she uses to reward her son for fulfilling all his responsibilities. “Depending on the number of coins earned during the week, he can then collect time for devices,” she explains.
In her opinion, although technology can be educational at times, it’s also addictive. As a mother of a child with autism spectrum disorder and a Registered Behavior Technician (RBT), a job position that consists of working directly with children on the spectrum by using toys, she thinks that toys will have to coexist along with technology because they are necessary and can never be replaced.