What if I tell you that almost every single kid use different smart toys for mind-blowing purpose, I personally know a parent whose 3 years old kid use a smart Rubik’s cube while getting ready for playschool.
Isn’t it amazing to imagine? How toys are becoming smart and involved in the routine life of a kid?
Best describes a smart toy in a way its onboard machine intelligence enables a play or learning experience for the user that simulates human-like intelligence. These smart toys can learn from and speak with the user, change their behaviour, provide interactive actions, and customize learning lessons
Smart Toys are modern-day toys, which possess artificial intelligence, and consist of a microprocessor, volatile or non-volatile memory units, and input & output devices.
Modern-day smart toys are incorporated with speech recognition and speech synthesizers, which can be easily implemented in software and hardware. In addition, sensors are being provided in many contemporary toys, which enable them to react to their surroundings, thereby making them more realistic.
When kids play with smart toys, they develop perception and reasoning. Smart toys help children in building a train of thought while they're building conversations. And embedded toy games like puzzles or quizzes boost up cognitive processes and develop their capabilities to think freely.
Let me tell you, these smart toys can make your kid learn amazing life skills in an even more wonderful manner. So, I am going to share with you some of the amazing ways that I came to know personally and by observation, with you all.
Social skills
When kids play with smart toys, they develop perception and reasoning. Smart toys help children in building a train of thought while they’re building conversations. And embedded toy games like puzzles or quizzes boost up the cognitive process and develop their capabilities to think freely.
Imagination
Imagination is the key when we talk of a child’s game. Every kid builds a whole new world around their toy while playing. And if the toy can help them to further evolve this world, and it encourages interest and exploration — it is becoming highly valuable
Education
Education is the main argument for smart toys because that’s their main purpose (besides entertainment, of course). And there are a lot of different games for any age. But what’s really important, is that playing with smart toys introduces children to the digital world.
These toys are becoming more and more popular, especially among busy working parents.
Ethics and safety
We got to admit, smart toy is quite a newish thing, and there’s no certification mark or quality label for it.
And it’s unsurprising that safety and ethical questions arise among conscious parents may children be misguided or even badly influenced by smart toys? What about security and privacy issues? Can toys be hacked?
To tell the truth, it’s quite a huge and sensitive area, and another stand-alone article should be devoted to that topic.
But to put alarmists out of suspense things are not as bad as you might think there are institutions and entities that ensure these smart toys are safe.
It is really important to form a genuine understanding of a smart interaction between a kid and a toy there are responsibilities on all side’s parents and manufacturers.
Parents’ responsibility
Parents have to drill down the information on the toy and its manufacturer. They have to be well-informed in order to foresee potential harm.
Parents should inform themselves whether the company that develops those toys is trusted on ethical content and whether it works closely with child psychologists and paediatricians.
Producer responsibility
As smart toys become increasingly popular, it is clear that legislators and producers have to work together on technology targeted to the little ones and make sure it is completely safe.
Robots’ nature should always be clear and intelligible, toys should be caring and compassionate. These smart toys should never be designed to deceive
Dependency
A smart toy, a doll, a robot — is never a person. And it’s something to keep in mind constantly. Toys do not have feelings, though probably all of us used to anthropomorphize favourite toys when we were kids.
So, we have to make sure it is impossible to manipulate children’s feelings or actions through the voice-enabled device.
Smart Toys give a sense of psychological comfort and safety, but a long-time dependency on it can lead to isolation from the real world.
This may, in turn, fade into a difficulty of differentiating between reality and fantasy, which is especially influential in children.
A smart toy may be compared to a child’s imaginary friend. This is a healthy relationship in moderation, but it should never be replacing interactions with real people.
Children learn from adults and other kids while communicating — they learn empathy and body language.
And above all, a talking toy is an excellent find for busy parents: the device can compensate lack of communication when no one is around.
All these factors work together for the growth of the smart toys market and I recommend my patient readers which include entrepreneurs, investors, and others to invest in the business of smart toys and see your business growing with no sky limit.
The global smart toys market is estimated to rise at a market growth of 16.5% CAGR during the forecast period.
