# Do modern toys destroy childhood creativity?



## Sparkie (Feb 26, 2012)

Please pardon the far-too-dramatic title to this thread.

I was wandering around Toys-R-Us today, looking for a Lego set for my nephew and I to set up when he comes to visit next, when I once again saw it once again.

Lego games.  "Board" style Lego games complete with dice and instructions on how to play.  

Now, let me explain why seeing this irks me:  When I was a kid, my friends and I didn't need a Lego board game set.  We made our own games with Legos.

At just eleven and ten years old, before any of us had ever played a D&D style RPG, we would raid our parent's Yahtzee or Backgammon dice and create games with written rules, Lego 'dungeons,' and simple character sheets that listed our 'Lego guy's' abilities and weaknesses.  (This would, of course, lead to arguments such as this:  "No, he can't jump that far!  He's just a wizard, not a thief!" - "Yes he can!  Wizards can levitate!")  

The point is that, as kids, we *had* to use our imagination and creativity.  If we wanted to play a game with Legos (or most any other toy,) then we had to make it ourselves.  Looking back, I now understand how important that sort of thing was for the development of my young mind.  Without experiences like that, it might be fair to say that I may not have the desire nor the ability to create stories for the enjoyment of others.

Perhaps I'm dead wrong on this, but I really think that more and more toys allow little room for a child's mind to grow.  I feel that children need playthings that help to build their creativity.

What do you think?  Am I flat-out wrong, or are there instances where toys and games do little to encourage the use of imagination?


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## Devor (Feb 26, 2012)

The lego games are just the equivalent of a regular board game, but with legos. They aren't rules on how to play with a typical lego set, so far as I can tell.

My son just picked up his duplos, and he carries the elephant with him everywhere. I've been eying the sets for when he's ready.


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## San Cidolfus (Feb 26, 2012)

Imagination isn't a recent development in human history.  The toys that we played with as children are light years ahead of what our grandparents had as little ones, and this continues as far back as you'd care to take it.

Any toy, however fancy, is just a starting point.  A child with an imagination will carry it further.

Sometimes it goes the other way, too, and no matter what fancy electronic delights are at our children's fingertips, they'll still reach for what intrigues them.  When I was five or six my older brother had a Nintendo, and I remember playing me some Gauntlet.  But in that very same room at that very same age, I can clearly remember being engaged with my favorite toy: a cardboard box.  It was big enough for me to sit inside and pretend it was a fighter plane.  No console gaming system could do that.

Don't despair for the children, Sparkie.  They'll turn out all right.  We did.


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## Haroon Al-Qahtani (Feb 26, 2012)

Kids can download an entire photo lab or music studio from Pirate Bay nowadays.  They can sample any writer they want on-line and soak up an artist's entire body of work without depleting their allowance.  They can skip wiring things together and simply put their ideas onto a canvas.  You can argue about how important it is to develop your own tool set and work hard to acquire it, but a person who wrote a word processor cannot inherently write a book anyone would care to read.

Last time I visited a toy store I merely realized that most of the products had been obsoleted by $99 smartphones.  You can download a chemistry set even -- I'm guessing.  There's a reason toy stores continue to go out of business.


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## Legendary Sidekick (Feb 26, 2012)

You're not wrong... but have no fear. There's still hope for this generation! A ten-year-old at my church told me about a Lego board game he invented. He told how each character class had a special "action" or "movement." I had to stop myself when he told me his "Tank" class had 7 health while everyone else had 5. (Only 40% more health? What kind of a wimpy tank is that?) But I was impressed with the amount of thought he and his younger brother put into their game!

My brother, my neighbor and I played an outdoor version of Double Dragon using sticks. Like any homegrown D&D game, we had math like health and damage, and there were "boss battles" (boss : DD :: dragon : D&D) and maybe a storyline. Admittedly not as safe as a Lego board game, but I think the creativity is the same. And we somehow survived these "battles" without injury.

No _serious_ injuries, I mean. We had to make a rule about the throwing knife (a small, sharp-looking stick). The eye is such a small target, but surprisingly easy to hit when you're aiming for the mid-torso!


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## Codey Amprim (Feb 27, 2012)

Honestly when I saw those Lego board games a few months back I was jealous that I didn't have that as a kid! I was always playing with legos I have a TON of them.

That aside, I do kind of agree. While I don't think it's completely ruined by smartphones, I do think they've had an unfixable effect on the toy business. My little sister plays about 60% of the time on my step-mother's iPhone and the rest with her toys. I got her started on Legos, too.

The bottom line, I think, should be that kids should only get a few things to play and develop with. The more stuff they have, the less they develop on a certain skill. I know when I grew up I only had Legos, cars, and action figures. Eventually I learned how to use the super Nintendo, and then gaming opened up to me. Games were do awesome back then.

That and we had sticks. Lots of em. And many ouchies while slaying evil bushes and swingset castles. Those were good times.

But mostly I think that it's just how everything is changing that is what is affecting the toy industry the most; kids just don't want to play with dolls and action figures when they have all kinds of mind-numbing games to play on screens. It's a shame, really. Children develop so many things when they use their creativity. I guess the parents should take some blame, too, for not recognizing/caring enough to not take action against this.

I'm not trying to make this sound like it's the end of the world, and I know that's what it seems like by reading it. Just stating what I think on the issue, but I do have a beef with a lot of the parenting horrors out there today.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Feb 27, 2012)

As a father of two boys who have loads of shiny, flashy toys (and a PS2 and a Wii and _the Internet_), I can tell you that they're just as imaginative as I was with toys back in the 1980s. We have several Indiana Jones LEGO sets, and my older son spends hours reconfiguring them (with all their specialized, custom pieces) to make all sorts of bizarre stuff.

I'm not really concerned about the idea of modern toys having a detrimental effect on childhood creativity, mostly because I've seen zero evidence that this is the case. It's easy to say "Look! Things are different!" but actually providing hard data that something bad has happened is a bit more difficult. (Assuming you can even figure out a way to quantify "childhood creativity" in order to demonstrate that there's less of it now.)


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## grahamguitarman (Feb 27, 2012)

Eee by gum when I were a lad....

Seriously though when I was a kid home computers and game consoles simply didn't exist full stop. lego was simple bricks with no custom bits at all, if you wanted to build a spaceship you had to figure it out using conventional bricks.  though to be honest Lego was for girls - me and my brothers had Meccano, which was way cooler, I remember building a five foot tall walking robot with that stuff   but 90% of the time we were too busy out on our bikes, or exploring, or having play battles in the woods to even think about toys - that was something to do when you got home in the evening.

But are kids today less creative, my 7 year old girl loves to make things or draw, and my five year old would rather be in the back garden than in front of a TV, so maybe they will be fine.  Toys and games are only vehicles for imagination and always have been, its the child that adds the vital imagination not the games designer.  

I used to work in the toy industry as a freelance sculptor (I literally used to design and sculpt the figures for the board games like hero quest ect) and we were always looking to make toys as flexible as possible in terms of what could be done with them.  and yet at play testing sessions, the kids would still think of a dozen ways of playing with things that the designers had never thought of.

I do think online gaming however is potentially more dangerous, it has the potential to create a whole generation of young people with zero social skills, which is kinda sad.  Some of my seventeen year old sons friends almost never leave their bedroom, never mind the house.  And I had to watch my son lose a lovely girlfriend because he was too addicted to his computer to put time into the relationship.  He simply didn't have the social skills to realise there is a difference between online socialising, and dealing with real people in the real world.

I don't intend to let my younger children fall into the same trap.


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## Steerpike (Feb 27, 2012)

I'm not too worried about it. My kids have good imaginations and enjoy electronic games and other technology.

It seems to me this is the sort of concern that you see from every generation about the next. When I was growing up my parents and grandparents talked about how such things were so different when they grew up (the implication being it was better), and I do it now. I'm sure my kids will do it when they have kids


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## Corvus (Feb 27, 2012)

grahamguitarman said:


> 90% of the time we were too busy out on our bikes, or exploring, or having play battles in the woods to even think about toys



 I did that to! Even though my sister and I were the only girls in the group. We would get our bikes out haw silly names like the Blue Knight and go about saving the world. Then when it got dark and we had to go home we would complain protest and beg for "Just five more minutes, please!" :angel:


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## grahamguitarman (Feb 28, 2012)

Corvus said:


> I did that to! Even though my sister and I were the only girls in the group. We would get our bikes out haw silly names like the Blue Knight and go about saving the world. Then when it got dark and we had to go home we would complain protest and beg for "Just five more minutes, please!" :angel:



Yep, me too, I hated having to come in.  Now its a battle just to get my son out of the house, and then he just wanders over to his friends house and plays on his friends computer instead


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## SeverinR (Mar 7, 2012)

I agree with San Cid,
kids will use their imagination, they might start with stuff we never dreamed of when we were little, but they will even take it that much further.
Some kids might not use their imagination much, but most still will.

Kids might not pick up sticks and use them as swords, or shoot their pointer finger like a gun, but they will create their world of imagination, different then ours, but their real world is alot different then ours was.

Why do I feel like I should go sit in a rocking chair and pout now? Kids these days, back in my day...!


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## Ophiucha (Mar 12, 2012)

How kids - and people in general - express their creativity is changing with the digital age. More people write in MS Word than they do on typewriters, or even by hand. Digital artists who use Photoshop and similar programs are beginning to outnumber those who use paints and canvases. And Lego might be dwindling in popularity with kids, or becoming less creative or interesting (have you _seen_ their 'girls lego' line?). But why not, as a parent, just buy your kid Minecraft? It's the same experience, in a different medium. Teach 'em how to download mods and maps, and they can explore the Millennium Falcon or build it themselves without you dropping $600 on the physical set. There are plenty of 'dress-up doll' websites where you dress up a 16-bit sprite in fairy wings and tennis shorts, just as effective as any Barbie doll. Toys may change forever, maybe they'll even be phased out, but the experience of creating, playing, and exploring will always exist.


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## thetraveler (Mar 20, 2012)

Totally agree with Minecraft being the new Lego. And one of you guys was talking about how your kid lost a girlfriend because of online gaming, that used to be. Best thing I ever did was a voluntary four month video game detox. Now, I'll play for like, 30 mintues and actually _want_ to get off and write, or call a friend, or go do my sprints, or go to the gym and Olympic lift, or practice my sword skills for LARPing(didn't they used to just call it playing in the woods?).

And I'm friggin' 16(I was completely joking about the schnapps in my introduction thread, btw)! It's... My generation needs help in a bad way. Creativity is so drained out of most people my age, it's ridiculous. I'm going to blame it on A) bad parenting, B) the public school system and C) too much television and video games. Granted, TV and video games ARE awesome(I love a good COD tourney with the guys), but playing them on your own just leads to addiction and lack of social skills.

That's my two bits. Also, my girlfriend was incredibly glad about the video game detox... Getting in a relationship with her was actually the inspiration for doing it.


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## Rikilamaro (Mar 21, 2012)

I ran into this with my son's Christmas gifts this year. Why buy a huge set of Legos to make a plane, firetruck or house out of when you can just buy the mega bucket of them and use your imagination!? My son got one of the sets to make an airplane and complained that the rounded pieces were not helpful in building any of his other creations. It made me just laugh. So yes, I think they do squelch creativity, but at the same time most kids are smart enough to work around their constraints. 
Same thing with the Star Wars sets. My brother made a ti-fighter without special pieces twenty years ago.

It's all about the money. They can charge more for super specific pieces. 

Or perhaps I'm just jaded.


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## Anders Ã„mting (May 3, 2012)

Sparkie said:


> Please pardon the far-too-dramatic title to this thread.
> 
> I was wandering around Toys-R-Us today, looking for a Lego set for my nephew and I to set up when he comes to visit next, when I once again saw it once again.
> 
> ...



Eh, I don't see how a Lego boardgame is any different from buying any other Lego set. You get a castle or a spaceship or something and then you assemble it following the instructions, getting a nice feeling of accomplishment when it's all put together.

Then a while later you take it apart again because you need spare parts for your massive Star Wars/Harry Potter/Indiana Jones vs the Ninja Pirates from Mars crossover.


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## Caged Maiden (May 3, 2012)

In a word, no.  But then, I think parenting has changed more than toys.  I have a background in nutrition, and so I'm going to start there in my blurb about children today.  They are different than we were um.. MANY years ago, and there's a few big reasons.  First, kids don't play outside as much.  When they're inside, they need cooler toys to keep them creative, so toys have advanced.  Around the world, diseases that were considered gone are coming back.  Rickets (caused by Vitamin D deficiency is coming back, because babies are not exposed to the sun.  Breast milk only contains Vitamin D when a mother has an ample amount, so if she is deficient, her baby gets NO vitamin D from her, which means it must get its own from sun exposure, and since glass blocks UV rays, that means taking your baby outside (which most people don't do regularly).  Oh man there's so many nutrients kids can be deficient in, its hard to say exactly how this will manifest in this indoor generation, but sun exposure and playing in the dirt with microorganisms is important to development for the immune system. 
When I was growing up, we played as long as there was light, but now kids come home and stay in (for their own protection), but in keeping our kids safe, we are hurting them.  Childhood obesity is something which is defining this generation, and it is in part due to the fact that most moms have to work and their children go off to day care or preschool, where they are given sub-standard care.  The healthiest thing for kids is to be at home with mom, outside in the garden or playing with their friends just like we did as children.  It's a difficult situation.  

In the past, European people developed lighter skin (because darker skinned people require 5 times the amount of sun exposure to create the vitamin D they need to function well) and were able to store enough in their bodies during the growing season to see them through the long winters.  But now, people (adults and children) are deficient in many areas.  Recently, England has seen a rise in the number of children with rickets, and the habit of putting sun screen on to protect against skin cancer is primarily the cause.  You cannot get the necessary amount of vitamin D from diet unless you plan very carefully.  Most people only get 10% from diet.  

So send your kids outside and let them play Ipods in the sun people.  It's not the toys, it's how we parent.  If the park is too far to walk, play in the garden or heck, play in the road, we all did it.  Nothing like a rousing game of street hockey.  Vitamin deficiencies affect our moods, how our bodies function on a chemical level, and how much energy we have and how we feel.  If your kids are difficult to handle, send them outside and let them run themselves out of energy.  They'll come home docile and pliant.  If they don't have friends to play with in the neighborhood, take them to the park and you can read a book in the sun while they run and scream their fool heads off!  It's win-win for everyone.

HA! there's my two cents.  Toys are great, and I wish we had some of these when we were younger, but imagination starts with how we parent, and let's face it, some people are not very good parents.  They'd rather sit a kid in his room and let him watch movies all day and play alone then drag him outside in the garden to pull weeds.  I've found that the garden is a place we all have fun.  My kids plant seeds, help me tidy up weeds and sticks and debris, but also they get endless hours of fun shooting the dog with water guns and picking fresh veggies or flowers.  

Words can't describe how lucky I feel that my husband works and I get to stay home.  We have four kids, all 18 months to 2 years apart, and while that can be challenging, we have a ready-made play group and we play together every single day.  Unfortunately, travel is pretty much out of the question, but it's a small price to pay.  

If anyone wants to know more about Vitamin D, the blood test to see whether you are deficient is an inexpensive one, and well worth the time and money.  It's a good thing to know and use as a barometer of whether you get enough sun exposure.


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## Penpilot (May 3, 2012)

I don't think it destroys creativity. It'll destroy creativity like writing on a computer vs. writing on a typewriter or by hand destroys writing craft. It's just different. 

IMHO you can give a kid a toy with all the pre-made rules or whatever printed out for them, but if they don't like them, they'll make up their own rules because it's more fun. Give a kid a lego kit for making an airplane, if they don't like planes they'll make a boat instead, or a skyscraper, or a dinosaur, etc. 

In some cases newer toys give children more opportunities to be creative. Ever see a 9yr old make stop motion animation with a computer? My jaw dropped when I saw one done by a friend's niece. It was not just for a 9yr old. It was good period.


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## Justme (May 3, 2012)

Our toys are destroying our knowledge of how to interact with others. As far as creativity. Our schools have been teaching creativity out of our children for years

Please listen to this vid and see what you think.

[video]http://www.wimp.com/schoolscreativity/[/video]​
Also you should read this, as well.

http://www4.uwsp.edu/education/lwilson/creativ/killers.htm


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## Devor (May 3, 2012)

Justme said:


> Our toys are destroying our knowledge of how to interact with others. As far as creativity. Our schools have been teaching creativity out of our children for years



The two are very interconnected.  The most creative teams in the world often describe their process as relying on a few common elements, but they all usually come down to talking excitedly about a concept with somebody else who is just as excited about it.  I think that most people have no idea how to be a part of a dynamic like that.


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## cliche (May 6, 2012)

One thing I have to say is also tampering with children's creativity is the people who enforce health and safety.
A few years ago I think they banned playing conkers in the playground because "it is too dangerous", then there was someone trying to ban children selling cakes in school at a bake sale because it could "give them food poisoning". Not to mention all of the health scares that are reported on the news that scientists have apparently researched... "breast milk will make your baby fat" then a couple of months later "breast milk will make your baby more intelligent" (MAKE UP YOUR MIND!!!). Yes sometimes they do have a valid point but half the time they point out the obvious "the sky is blue", "if you put your hand into a fire it will get burnt". It really makes me wonder why the government are putting aside so much of our tax for these scientists who seem more like clean freaks who want to wrap this generations children up in cotton wool.
/rant


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## Saigonnus (May 9, 2012)

I don't know as this helps or hurts the basis of the discussion, but I grew up fairly poor and my parents couldn't afford very many toys for me or my sibs, so we didn't have a whole of things to "work with" when it came to exercising our imagination, but I'd like to think mine is fairly extensive considering. We'd played outside with our friends and often created "live-action" roleplaying scenarios using sticks or whatever wwe could find around the neighborhood as "props" and the scenarios were everything from a medieval adventures stalking a dragon to a cops and robbers hunting down the bad guys who'd just robbed a bank.

My mom would read to me; from whatever she happened to pick up, even before I was born and of course after and as such I could read even before I went to preschool; so it gave me a leg up on the other students who were learning their ABCs while I was reading Dr. Seuss. I'd like to think that started me off the right way on my thirst for learning and exercising my creativity.  

I don't think it has much to do with whether a child has toys or not or how good those toys are; just how innately intelligent and imaginative they are and how much their brain thirsts for that knowledge. I do think that parents who are supportive of their children's hopes and dreams and allows them to utilize their creativity are better than those parents that funnel all of their kid's energy into something they may not enjoy or like much (because they want their son/daughter to be a doctor or whatever) or put their kids into so many "extracurricular activities" that they don't have time for themselves at all. Not having time to exercise your creativity is the worst thing a parent could do for their kid.


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