‘Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.’ If those words resonate with you, then you may be betraying your age, as Listen With Mother was last broadcast in 1982. It was a children’s radio programme with stories and nursery rhymes, which at one time had a million daily listeners. This makes more sense when remembering that in 1950, only 350,000 homes in the UK had television sets. And yet despite increasingly stimulating tech in our households, the wireless has proved a hardy perennial. The fact you can cook or commute while listening means it fits neatly around our increasingly busy lives. Plus, this ability to keep us company while hanging the laundry lends it an intimacy which makes podcast or radio hosts feel like old friends.
But audio has not necessarily brought children along with it: the National Literacy Trust finds that 39.4% of 8 to 18-year-olds enjoyed listening to audio in 2023, down on 2021’s figure. 2 in 5 of those aged 5 to 8 have listened to an audiobook in the last month. I actually find this to be an encouraging proportion for young audiobook consumption – and one that should grow, if we can possibly help it. The same report finds strong correlations between audio-enjoyers and enthusiastic readers and writers; 45.8% of children say audiobooks help them relax and a similar number find it helps with understanding a subject. While there are ‘premium’ products out there (such as the YOTO player for parents with £90 in their back-pocket), 70% of children simply access audiobooks via free streaming sites like YouTube or the BBC, who still put out lots of quality content on their School Radio webpage.
The benefits of audio are particularly pertinent when considering the youngest brains. As the Early Years framework outlines, listening is a skill in itself. Out-loud stories force children to listen actively (as anyone who’s had to rewind their Audible app will know). Moreover, the visual must come from the child’s head, at an age when even books are always accompanied by pictures. Audio’s ‘illustrations’ are its sound effects, ambiences and thoughtfully-composed music. If you said to a 22-month-old, ‘Wow! A seagull diving into the sea’, they might look at you blankly, while thinking: ‘What’s a seagull? What’s diving? What, perhaps, is the sea?’. But if you began with 6 seconds of waves and ocean spray, heard a loud squawking, introduced a descending violin and finished with a splash-splosh! …then you start to see (or rather, hear) how this can work. This capacity to visualise is a foundation stone of imaginative play, which has been linked with healthy cognitive development since Piaget, Vygotsky and others first theorised its usefulness.
YOTO brands itself as ‘the screen-free audio player’ which rather cynically preys on caregiver anxieties around screentime. To return briefly to the 1950s, all UK television screens used to abruptly turn blank at 6pm, for the hour known as ‘Toddlers’ Truce’, facilitating easier pyjama-chivvying. In other words, the moral panic around screens is not new. The notion that ‘audio’ is the opposite of ‘visual’ makes it easy to leverage audio for the anti-screentime discourse. This is unhelpful. Firstly, we implicate audio in the (often class-based) caregiver culture wars. Secondly, we put audio in the ‘difficult and boring’ category (fellow bedmates include boiled broccoli and getting in the buggy). Thirdly, it is simplistic: fantastic children’s storytelling takes place through oral culture, picture books, audiobooks, brilliant cartoons – you can find Goldilocks or even The Gruffalo across most of these. What is different about audio is: despite how long it’s been around, its vast potential to boost learning and development in the early years still remains relatively unexplored.
Oscar Wood is Director of Product and co-founder of now>press>play
