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The Internet of Toys (IoToys) is a developing market within our Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. This book examines the rise of internet-connected toys and aims to anticipate the opportunities and risks of IoToys before their widespread diffusion. Contributors to this volume each provide a critical analysis of the design, production, regulation, representation and consumption of internet-connected toys. In order to address the theoretical, methodological and policy questions that arise from the study of these new playthings, and contextualise the diverse opportunities and challenges that IoToys pose to educators, families and children themselves, the chapters engage with notions of mediatization, datafication, robotification, connected and post-digital play. This timely engagement with a key transformation in children’s play will appeal to all readers interested in understanding the social uses and consequences of IoToys, and primarily to researchers and students in children and media, early childhood studies, media and communications, sociology, education, social psychology, law and design.

The Internet of Toys (IoToys) is a developing market within our Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. This book examines the rise of internet-connected toys and aims to anticipate the opportunities and risks of IoToys before their widespread diffusion. Contributors to this volume each provide a critical analysis of the design, production, regulation, representation and consumption of internet-connected toys. In order to address the theoretical, methodological and policy questions that arise from the study of these new playthings, and contextualise the diverse opportunities and challenges that IoToys pose to educators, families and children themselves, the chapters engage with notions of mediatization, datafication, robotification, connected and post-digital play. This timely engagement with a key transformation in children’s play will appeal to all readers interested in understanding the social uses and consequences of IoToys, and primarily to researchers and students in children and media, early childhood studies, media and communications, sociology, education, social psychology, law and design.

In this chapter we outline a research toolkit for the study of Internet-connected toys and their processual and situated affordances. We account for the complex and varied ways in which connected toys, children, adults and media infrastructures interrelate and interact to form systems of meaning and ensembles of technologies and agency, which constitute the digital materialities and social practices of connected play. This toolkit of research methods uses an ethnographic methodology but is informed by two epistemological approaches – phenomenological and non-representational. Thus, this toolkit takes into account the sociocultural context, materiality and symbolic dimensions of connected toy use.

This introduction aims to contextualise The Internet of Toys (IoToys) within the tradition of media and communications, set out the theoretical foundations for this volume, and explore the notions of mediatization, datafication and robotification. First, it makes the argument that IoToys should be conceived of as media that are triply articulated in children’s everyday lives. Their network-connectivity and sensor-based functions provide the basis for the mediatization and datafication of children’s lives. Second, it analyses IoToys as toys that enable forms of hybrid play and embedded play, and as social robots that are automated in such a way that they elicit social responses from or interaction with children. Finally, it provides a summary of the chapters of the book.

The concluding chapter reviews the key themes as set out in the introduction and in the contributions to this volume. Here, Mascheroni and Holloway revisit the concepts of datafication and surveillance capitalism in order to emphasise critical questions and map out possible trajectories that future research in the field could address and pursue. The discussion of surveillance capitalism emphasises the double positioning of children in the market as both digital consumers and digital labourers. The chapter also makes the argument that the social and political consequences of datafication extend beyond privacy issues to the transformation of the very conditions under which citizenship is enacted.

The market for children’s apps aimed at pre-school aged children is expanding in the context of the schoolification and marketisation of very young children’s education and development. When subject to critical analysis, the download pages pertaining to these apps reveal the dominant discourse to be one of ‘pedagogical responsibilisation’, for parents who seek to optimise their children’s educational opportunities. A neoliberal market-driven rationale frames the parenting role, encouraging investment in extracurricular activities for children. Thus, good parenting becomes analogous with the use of early learning educational apps.

The Internet of Toys (IoToys) is a developing market within our Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. This book examines the rise of internet-connected toys and aims to anticipate the opportunities and risks of IoToys before their widespread diffusion. Contributors to this volume each provide a critical analysis of the design, production, regulation, representation and consumption of internet-connected toys. In order to address the theoretical, methodological and policy questions that arise from the study of these new playthings, and contextualise the diverse opportunities and challenges that IoToys pose to educators, families and children themselves, the chapters engage with notions of mediatization, datafication, robotification, connected and post-digital play. This timely engagement with a key transformation in children’s play will appeal to all readers interested in understanding the social uses and consequences of IoToys, and primarily to researchers and students in children and media, early childhood studies, media and communications, sociology, education, social psychology, law and design.

The notion of the quantified self stems from the use of wearable smart devices and tracking apps. These technologies increasingly include monitoring apps or wearable technologies assisting parents in tracking their children’s health, or emotion-maximising educational apps that measure and gamify children’s educational achievement. Together with Internet of Things toys, self-tracking apps and devices concur to the datafication of children’s play, learning and health. Therefore, concerns have been raised as to whether these developments take into account children’s rights or respect their developmental, cognitive and emotional needs The chapter examines the emergent research on children’s self-tracking apps and wearables, and identifies key themes in the future research agenda, namely: the implications of these tools for children’s embodied experiences and literacy practices; the risks for children’s privacy rights and data security; the changes in parent-child and teacher-child relationships; the consequences of neoliberal self-tracking and the new politics of the body for children’s development and self-identity.

The appropriation of smartphones by teenagers and, increasingly, children has raised concern over excessive use, a preoccupation which is sometimes shared by children themselves, complaining that smartphones have changed the context of face-to-face interactions with peers. Children also at times admit to be "addicted" to their phones, feeling the need to check the phone every moment or so. The issue of excessive use has originally been addressed within the field of internet studies through a medical/psychological framework: internet addiction is understood as an impulse-control disorder and as such it not dissimilar to other pathological conditions such as gambling or substance consumption. A medical approach to excessive use is problematic in the case of smartphones. Rather, mobile-specific approaches to young people's communication suggest to frame teenagers' attachment to their mobile phones through the lens of the "emancipation approach", according to which teenagers move out from family sphere through developing a stronger connection with the peer group, also by means of mobile communication. This chapter contrasts the two perspectives on excessive use of smartphones drawing on a quantitative and qualitative data collected across Europe as part of a research project on access and use of the internet from mobile devices among 9-to-16-year-old children. It also shows how looking at excessive smartphones use from a different perspective helps illuminate the process of incorporation of smartphones into every day life, understand how communicative affordances are socially negotiated, while highlighting the continuities with mobile phones and mobile communication in general. The current debate over the appropriate contexts and practices of smartphones use is indeed indicative of the stage of domestication of the device, suggesting that the technology has not yet been normalised and taken for granted. On the other side, however, the appropriation of smartphones draws