Two months ago, most parents had never heard of fidget spinners. Heck, most Canadian kids hadn’t either. But the mesmerizing gadgets intended to keep restless kids busy have quickly become the toy world’s latest red-hot fad.
To many teachers, though, fidget spinners aren’t helping kids with distraction; they’re causing it, creating an aggravating annoyance they say aren’t helping kids focus at all.
Fidget toys seemed to come out of nowhere this spring, surging in popularity in a matter of weeks with promises of stress relief and an outlet for pent-up energy.
There are many kinds, but the most popular are spinners -- gadgets about the size of a drink coaster with weighted propellers and a middle bearing that allow them to spin and spin.
Wing Tong, the manager of Comex Hobby in Edmonton says her store is now selling hundreds of spinners a week, calling the sudden toy craze among elementary and junior high school students nearly unprecedented.
“You also see older kids have them and adults see kids have them now, so it’s expanding,” she told CTV Edmonton.
The spinners are just as popular in the U.S., where fidget spinners and cubes currently dominate the Top 30 most popular toys on Amazon.
Edmonton mother Amanda Siminoski has already bought a couple of spinners for her son, Xavier, saying she thinks they can help calm him.
“Anything that helps them focus is worth the money, I think,” she said.
In Siminoski’s son’s class, the students are allowed to use the spinners after they’ve completed their work.
“For him, if he has something he can fidget with in his lap,” she said. “…If he’s fidgeting, then he can focus instead of looking around and doing things that he’s not supposed to be doing.”
But many teachers say the spinners aren’t helping kids; they’re distracting them.
Chris, an occasional teacher with the Hamilton Wentworth school board (who’d prefer not to give his full name), says he was recently supply-teaching a Grade 7/8 class in which at least six boys were playing with the spinners in class.
From what he’s seen, fidget spinners are simply a distraction.
“I don't see them helping in any way. They’re not helping kids focus at all,” he told CTVNews.ca.
The toys are billed as tools for kids with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) to give them an outlet for their nervous energy. And in fact, some studies show that kids with ADHD concentrate better if they are allowed to move and fidget.
Lots of other research has shown that doodling can help with focusing, while other studies have found that getting kids moving with exercise can help increase attention among kids.
But no specific studies have been done to show whether the tiny, repetitive movements needed for fidget toys can really help with focus. Chris says that among the fellow teachers he’s spoken to, the consensus is the gadgets have no educational value.
“There may be some kids with ADHD for whom they'd be useful, but in my experience, those are not the kids who are buying these things,” he said.
Some schools in the U.S. and the U.K. have become so fed up with the toys, they have banned them from classrooms.
With the spinners still so new here in Canada, most schools haven’t taken a position on them. And Chris says toy crazes can come and go so quickly, schools often choose to wait the fads out rather than draft policies, leaving it to teachers to make their own rules.
For Chris, he says he would be happy to see the end of fidget spinners in class.
“I think they're not appropriate for the classroom,” he said.
“Parents who are buying them, thinking they're helping their kids with distraction, they just are falling for the marketing.”
With a report from CTV Edmonton’s David Ewasuk
