Less is More

A friend of ours gave our 1-year old this strange wooden box with wooden carrots sticking out of it. He absolutely loves it, he just takes the carrots in and out for hours. This got me onto Montessori toys, and eventually onto Lovevery. I’m in a no way affiliated with this company, but I love their products. They basically send you a box of mostly wooden toys suited to your child’s age, every couple of months. Every box has a few different toys and things, and some instructions on why this is the right toy for them now, and what to do with each. A box of carrots is in one of the age kits.

The hit rate on these toys is off the chart with our son, and so many of them seem to lead to deeper more natural play. Reading some of Lovevery’s online material, they talked about how you should take some of the toys away when you introduce new toys. Montessori educators, emphasize a minimalist play environment – “when it comes to physical objects, less is more”, as this approach helps kids focus and engage more meaningfully with what they have. You’ll find similar advice in many parenting books, like in Simplicity Parenting, by Kim John Payne, “a smaller, more manageable quantity of toys invites deeper play and engagement”. Instead of flitting from one toy to another, children with limited options often pour their creativity into inventing games or stories with a single object. By reducing excess toys, we actually “provide more time for play”, allowing kids to sustain attention and explore one thing fully.

This intuitively make sense, but I wanted to understand the science behind it better, and also think about how this extends to us as adults. It’s hard to believe something so impactful for children doesn’t affect us too. It’s clear that we live in a time of near infinite choice when it comes to entertainment, learning and growing, and in fact often all the options are competing for your attention. What is this doing to us? 

Children and Play: Less options helps with development

There’s an interesting study from University of Toledo where toddlers were exposed to two play settings: one with 16 toys and one with just 4 toys. The results were are really interesting and meaningful – in the four-toy environment, toddlers played twice as long and in more sophisticated ways with each toy than they did when 16 toys were available. With fewer distractions, the children’s play was more creative and focused: they found new uses for each toy and engaged in longer periods of pretend play. The researchers reported that “an abundance of toys present reduced the quality of toddlers’ play,” whereas limiting the number of toys allowed better focus and more creative, imaginative play. In fact, the toddlers with only 4 toys showed significantly more instances of deep exploration – one and a half times more interactions per toy, indicating more sustained and inventive play than those in the toy-rich setting. I can point you to other studies of reducing of toys with similar results. This kind of focused, self-directed play supports many areas of development, from fine motor skills to problem-solving and social-emotional growth.

Child development experts often note that when children have too many toys, they tend to engage only superficially. But also often simple toys can prompt far more creativity because it can become anything in the child’s imagination. In an now famous experiment in Germany, several nurseries removed all toys for an extended period, leaving children with only basic furniture and materials. At first the kids were frustrated and bored, but soon they began using their surroundings in inventive ways – turning chairs and blankets into forts, imaginary trains, and even staging circuses and plays. Teachers observed that during the “toy-free” months, children’s concentration and social play skills improved markedly. Another benefit was that kids learned to collaborate and communicate better during play. By the end of the experiment, educators concluded that the children “concentrate better... integrate better into groups and communicate better” than peers in conventional classrooms. Even their artwork became more elaborate once art supplies were returned. Parents in the program also saw positive changes, and experiments with similar concepts at home, a bit more pulled back, and so meaningful improvement to the children’s behaviour.

In Western societies where toy stores and advertisers push an abundance of options, a growing movement of educators, psychologists, and parents are instead embracing “less is more” for play. I’m one of those parents.

The Modern Digital Age: Overabundance and Shallow Engagement

When it comes to adults, there’s a lot of evidence to suggestion having too many options results in overload, and generally lower satisfaction, even after we’ve made a choice, as the thought of maybe we got it wrong lingers. (I recommend Barry Schwartz talks on this if you’re interested), and also having to make choices between things introduces real fatigue, but there’s a much broader challenge here.

Having a lot of choices available to us, means we don’t achieve the depth of learning and enjoyment from the things we do, and it is resulting in rewiring of our brain. It’s making us unhappier and stupider.

To give evidence of the rewiring, we find that that 20 years ago people spent about 2½ minutes on a screen task before switching. By recent years, the average attention span on any screen is only 47 seconds before we divert our focus to something else. This change was first caused due to endless notifications, messages and distractions, as different apps and service compete for our attention, but now even when those are taken away we reach for our phones and other distraction tools to help break the focus of deeper engagement.

In the broader sense, our “attention economy” – where limitless content competes for our eyeballs – often results in a fragmented experience. We might scroll through a social media feed and consume a hundred tidbits of news, posts, and ads in a few minutes, but recall and engage with almost none of them in a meaningful way. Psychologists refer to this state as continuous partial attention, where we’re never fully present with any one piece of content. Over time, this habit can make it challenging to engage in deep work or learning.

There’s a real movement encouraging “digital detox” or “slow media” practices to combat these effects. For example, some readers are returning to print books or devices that don’t have internet access, in order to read without the temptation of clicking away. Even simple choices like choosing one TV show, and working through that over multiple weeks without mixing it with others, listening to albums again rather than never ending algorithmic playlist. Educators are also exploring techniques to improve students’ attention in the classroom, given that many arrive with shortened attention spans. The conversation has shifted to how we can reclaim focus in an age of endless options.

Building the Digital Platforms of the Future

I’m working with our team at Higlo to developing a new family-to-family communication device, that we sometimes think of as a modern family computer. A device for the whole family to use, together, that aims to be health and good for the whole family, children and adults. And we don’t want to feed into the same problems that is killing our attention, enjoyment, and growing potential.

We’re not the only people thinking in this way, there’s a real movement of building platforms and products that are more mindful of this, and are not just another firehose of endless digital content.

In practice what this means is to not push endless content, and to not offer infinite choices, but to heavily pair down what is available at any moment, and encourage focused time.

It also means presenting people, and especially kids, with more simple and empty digital spaces, for them to build and play in, to create their activities with imagination. This is a really interesting concept in the digital age.

If you’d like to learn more about some of these ideas, and want to explore early access to a modern more healthy platform, please join the waiting list on our product.