The Internet of Things is reshaping many households’ digital landscape and influencing children’s play and learning, especially in the form of toys that are named the Internet of Toys (IoToys). IoToys may generate a significant influence on children’s growth. While increasing attention is drawn to the IoToys, confusion around their conceptualization and use is evident. Without a thorough understanding of what the IoToys are, the progress of meaningful research on this topic will be greatly hindered. We, thus, conducted a systematic review to determine existing definitions of the IoToys using seven major databases over the past 20 years. After analyzing the definitions identified, we found that the previous definitions neglected the significance of defining “toys” in their work. The review led to a discussion around how to understand “toys” and then a more precise conceptualization of the IoToys, based on which implications for future research are offered.
Al-KhalifaH. S.FaisalH. R.RushdiS. M.AlNawwarG. M.Al-GumaeiG. N.AlabduljabbarA. A. (2018). Basma: An interactive IoT-based plush toy for Arabic-speaking children. Journal of Computer Science, 14(11), 1440–1453. doi:10.3844/jcssp.2018.1440.1453
2.
AlbuquerqueO. de P.FantinatoM.KelnerJ.de AlbuquerqueA. P. (2020). Privacy in smart toys: Risks and proposed solutions. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 39, 1–15. doi:10.1016/j.elerap.2019.100922
3.
AmancioF.FantinatoM.HungP.CoutinhoG.RoaJ. (2018). Evaluation of the perception of Brazilians about smart toys and children’s privacy. In Proceedings of the 44th Latin American computing conference, São Paulo, Brazil, 1–5 October (pp. 318–327). IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/CLEI.2018.00046
4.
AmengualE.BibiloniA.MascaróM.Palmer-RodríguezP. (2019). What does the GDPR mean for IoToys data security and privacy?. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2, 881–889. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-16184-2
5.
ArnottL.PalaiologouI.GrayC. (2019). An ecological exploration of the Internet of Toys in early childhood everyday life. In MascheroniG.HollowayD. (Eds.), The Internet of Toys: Practices, affordances and the political economy of children’s smart play (pp. 135–157). Springer Nature.
6.
ArnottL.YellandN. (2020). Multimodal lifeworlds: Pedagogies for play inquiries and explorations. Journal of Early Childhood Education Research, 9(1), 124–146.
7.
AshtonK. (2009). That ‘Internet of Things’ thing. RFiD Journal, 22(7), 97–114.
8.
BarasK.BritoL. M. P. L. (2018). Introduction to the internet of things. In HassanQ. F.KhanA. ur R.MadaniS. A. (Eds.), Internet of Things: Challenges, advances, and applications (pp. 3–32). Taylor & Francis, CRC Press.
9.
BerrimanL.MascheroniG. (2019). Exploring the affordances of smart toys and connected play in practice. New Media & Society, 21(4), 797–814. doi:10.1177/1461444818807119
10.
BouckE. C.OkoloC. M.CourtadC. A. (2017). Technology at home: Implications for children with disabilities. Journal of Special Education Technology, 22(3), 43–56. doi:10.1177/016264340702200305
11.
BradleyR. H.. (1985). Social-cognitive development and toys. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 5(3), 11–29. doi:10.1177/027112148500500303
12.
BritoR.DiasP.OliveiraG. (2018). Young children, digital media and smart toys: How perceptions shape adoption and domestication. British Journal of Educational Technology, 49(5), 807–820. doi:10.1111/bjet.12655
13.
BritoR.DiasP.OliveiraG. (2019). The domestication of smart toys: Perceptions and practices of young children and their parents. In MascheroniG.HollowayD. (Eds.), The Internet of Toys: Practices, affordances and the political economy of children’s smart play (pp. 111–133). Springer Nature.
ChaudronS.GeneiatakisD.KounelisI.Di GioiaR. (2019). Testing Internet of Toys designs to improve privacy and security. In MascheroniG.HollowayD. (Eds.), The Internet of Toys: Practices, affordances and the political economy of children’s smart play (pp. 223–239). Springer Nature.
17.
ChuG.ApthorpeN.FeamsterN. (2019). Security and privacy analyses of internet of things children's toys. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 6(1), 978–985. doi:10.1109/JIOT.2018.2866423
18.
de AlbuquerqueA. P.KelnerJ. (2019). Toy user interfaces: Systematic and industrial mapping. Journal of Systems Architecture, 97, 77–106. doi:10.1016/j.sysarc.2018.12.001
19.
de CarvalhoL. G.ElerM. M. (2017). Security requirements for smart toys. In HammoudiS.SmialekM.CampO., et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th international conference on enterprise information systems, Porto, Portugal, 26–29 April (Vol. 2, pp. 144–154). SciTePress. doi:10.5220/0006337001440154
20.
de CarvalhoL. G.ElerM. M. (2018). Security tests for smart toys. In HammoudiS.SmialekM.CampO., et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th international conference on enterprise information systems, Funchal, Portugal, 21–24 March (Vol. 2, pp. 111-120). SciTePress. doi:10.5220/0006776101110120
21.
de CarvalhoL. G.FantinatoM.ElerM. M. (2020). Security requirements identification and prioritization for smart toys. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 41, 1–13. doi:10.1016/j.elerap.2020.100972
22.
DemetzouK.BöckL.HanteerO. (2018). Smart bears don’t talk to strangers: Analysing privacy concerns and technical solutions in smart toys for children. In Proceedings of the living in the internet of things: Cybersecurity of the IoT - 2018, London, UK, 28–29 March (pp. 1-7). IET. doi:10.1049/cp.2018.0005
23.
EloS.KyngäsH. (2008). The qualitative content analysis process. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 62(1), 107–115. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2648.2007.04569.x
24.
FantinatoM.HungP. C. K.JiangY.RoaJ.VillarrealP.MelaisiM.AmancioF. (2018). A preliminary study of Hello Barbie in Brazil and Argentina. Sustainable Cities and Society, 40, 83–90. doi:10.1016/j.scs.2018.03.006
GoughD.OliverS.ThomasJ. (2017). An introduction to systematic reviews (2nd ed.). SAGE.
27.
GröberK. (1932). Children’s toys of bygone days: A history of playthings of all peoples from prehistoric times to the XIX century. B. T. Batsford.
28.
Hassinger-DasB.ZoshJ. M.Hirsh-PasekK.GolinkoffR. M. (2017). Toys. In PepplerK. (Ed.), The SAGE encyclopedia of out-of-school learning (pp. 781–783). SAGE Publications.
29.
HeljakkaK.IhamäkiP. (2018). Preschoolers learning with the Internet of Toys: From toy-based edutainment to transmedia literacy. Seminar.Net: Media, Technology & Life-Long Learning, 14(1), 85–102.
30.
HeljakkaKIhamäkiP. (2019). Persuasive toy friends and preschoolers: Playtesting IoToys. In MascheroniG.HollowayD. (Eds.), The Internet of Toys: Practices, affordances and the political economy of children’s smart play (pp. 159–178). Springer Nature.
31.
HollowayD.GreenL. (2016). The Internet of toys. Communication Research and Practice, 2(4), 506–519. doi:10.1080/22041451.2016.1266124
32.
HungP. C. K.FantinatoM.RaffertyL. (2016). A study of privacy requirements for smart toys. In Proceedings of the 20th pacific asia conference on information systems, Chiayi, Taiwan, 27 June–1 July (pp. 1–7). https://aisel.aisnet.org/pacis2016/71
33.
HungP. C. K.IqbalF.HuangS. C.MelaisiM.PangK. (2016). A glance of child’s play privacy in smart toys. In SunX.LiuA.ChaoHC., et al. (Eds.), Cloud computing and security (pp. 217–231). Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-48674-1_20
34.
HungP. C. K.TangJ. K. T.KanevK. (2017). Introduction. In TangJ. K. T.HungP. C. K. (Eds.), Computing in smart toys (pp. 1–5). Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-62072-5
35.
IhamäkiP.HeljakkaK. (2019). The internet of toys, connectedness and character-based play in early education. In AraiK.BhatiaR.KapoorS. (Eds.), Proceedings of the future technologies conference (FTC) 2018, Vancouver, Canada, 13–14 November (pp. 1079–1096). Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-02686-8_80
36.
KaraN.CagiltayK. (2020). Smart toys for preschool children: A design and development research. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 39(2), 1–11. doi:10.1016/j.elerap.2019.100909
37.
KewalramaniS.PalaiologouI.ArnottL.DardanouM. (2020). The integration of the internet of toys in early childhood education: A platform for multi-layered interactions. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 28(2), 197–213. doi:10.1080/1350293X.2020.1735738
38.
KnowlesB.FinneyJ.BeckS.DevineJ. (2018). What children’s imagined uses of the BBC micro:bit tells us about designing for their IoT privacy, security and safety. Proceedings of the living in the Internet of Things: Cybersecurity of the IoT - 2018 (pp. 1–6). IET. doi:10.1049/cp.2018.0015
39.
KshetriN.VoasJ. (2018). Cyberthreats under the bed. Computer, 51(5), 92–95. doi:10.1109/MC.2018.2381121
40.
KudrowitzB. (2014). Emerging technology and toy design. In FollettJ. (Ed.), Designing for emerging technologies (pp. 237–253). O'Reilly Media.
41.
KudrowitzB. M.WallaceD. R. (2010). The play pyramid: A play classification and ideation tool for toy design. International Journal of Arts and Technology, 3(1), 36–56. doi:10.1504/IJART.2010.030492
42.
LeeB.KimY. (2018). The effects of S-Block curriculum on kindergarten children’s logical-mathematical and spatial ability. In Proceedings of the IEEE region 10 annual international conference, Jeju, Korea, 28–31 October 2018 (pp. 802–805). IEEE. doi:10.1109/TENCON.2018.8650161
LevinovitzA. (2017). Towards a theory of toys and toy-play. Human Studies, 40(2), 267–284. doi:10.1007/s10746-016-9418-0
45.
LiS.ChenW.ChenY.ChenC.ZhengZ. (2019). Makespan-minimized computation offloading for smart toys in edge-cloud computing. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 37, 1–10. doi:10.1016/j.elerap.2019.100884
46.
ManchesA.DuncanP.PlowmanL.SabetiS. (2015). Three questions about the Internet of things and children. TechTrends, 59(1), 76–83. doi:10.1007/s11528-014-0824-8
47.
MarshJ. (2017). The Internet of Toys: A posthuman and multimodal analysis of connected play. Teachers College Record, 119(12), 1–32.
MascheroniG.HollowayD. (2019a). Hybrid methods for hybrid play: A research toolkit. In MascheroniG.HollowayD. (Eds.), The Internet of Toys: Practices, affordances and the political economy of children’s smart play (pp. 265–282). Springer Nature.
50.
MascheroniG.HollowayD. (2019b). Introducing the internet of toys. In MascheroniG.HollowayD. (Eds.), The Internet of Toys: Practices, affordances and the political economy of children’s smart play (pp. 1–22). Springer Nature.
51.
MertalaP. (2019). Young children's perceptions of ubiquitous computing and the internet of things. British Journal of Educational Technology, 51(1), 84-102. doi:10.1111/bjet.12821
52.
MilosevicT.DiasP.MifsudC.Trueltzsch-WijnenC. W. (2018). Media representation of children’s privacy in the context of the use of “smart” toys and commercial data collection. Medijske Studije, 9(18), 6–25. doi:10.20901/ms.9.18.1
53.
MoherD.LiberatiA.TetzlaffJ.AltmanD., The PRISMA Group. (2009). Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: The PRISMA statement. PLOS Medicine, 6(7), 1-6. DOI:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000097.
54.
MurphyF. E.DonovanM.CunninghamJ.JezequelT.GarcíaE.JaegerA.McCarthyJ.PopoviciE. M. (2015). I4Toys: Video technology in toys for improved access to play, entertainment, and education. Proceedings of the IEEE international symposium on technology and society, Dublin, Ireland, 11–12 November 2015 (pp. 1–6). IEEE. doi:10.1109/ISTAS.2015.7439423
55.
NeuschützK. (2013). Children’s creative play: How simple dolls and toys help your child develop. Floris Books.
PeterJ.RinaldoK.BarcoA.de JongC.van StratenC. L. (2019). Asking today the crucial questions of tomorrow: social robots and the internet of toys. In MascheroniG.HollowayD. (Eds.), The Internet of toys: Practices, affordances and the political economy of children’s smart play (pp. 25–46). Springer Nature.
58.
PontesL.CoutinhoG.HungP. C. K.YanksonB. (2019). Security in smart toys: A systematic review of literature. In StreitzN.KonomiS. (Eds.), Distributed, ambient and pervasive interactions (pp. 28–38). Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-21935-2_3
59.
RaffertyL.HungP. C. K.FantinatoM.PeresS. M.IqbalF.KuoS.HuangS. (2017). Towards a privacy rule conceptual model for smart toys. In TangJ.HungP. (Eds.), Computing in smart toys (pp. 85–102). Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-62072-5_6
60.
RiveraD.GarciaA.Martin-RuizM. L.AlarcosB.VelascoJ. R.Gomez OlivaA. (2019). Secure communications and protected data for a internet of things smart toy platform. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 6(2), 3785–3795. doi:10.1109/jiot.2019.2891103
61.
SalgadoA. de L.DiasF. S.MattosJ. P. R.FortesR. P. de M.HungP. C. K. (2019). Smart toys and children’s privacy: Usable privacy policy insights from a card sorting experiment. In Proceedings of the 37th ACM international conference on the design of communication, Portland, USA, 4–6 October (pp. 1-8). ACM. doi:10.1145/3328020.3353951
62.
SeiterE. (2004). The internet playground. In GoldsteinJ.BuckinghamD.BrougèreG. (Eds.), Toys, games, and media (pp. 105–120). L. Erlbaum Associates.
63.
SelwynN. (2018). Foreword. In DanbyS.FleerM.DavidsonC.HatzigianniM. (Eds.), Digital childhoods: Technologies and children’s everyday lives. Springer.
64.
ShashaS.MahmoudM.MannanM.YoussefA. (2019). Playing with danger: A taxonomy and evaluation of threats to smart toys. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 6(2), 2986-3002. DOI:10.1109/JIOT.2018.2877749.
StreiffJ.DasS.CannonJ. (2019). Overpowered and underprotected toys empowering parents with tools to protect their children. In Proceedings of the 5th international conference on collaboration and internet computing, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 12–14 December 2019 (pp. 322–329). IEEE. doi:10.1109/CIC48465.2019.00045
67.
Sutton-SmithB. (1986). Toys as culture. Gardner Press.
68.
ValenteJ.CardenasA. A. (2017). Security & privacy in smart toys. In Proceedings of the 2017 workshop on internet of things security and privacy, Dallas, USA, 3 November (pp. 19–24). ACM. doi:10.1145/3139937.3139947
69.
WangW.-N.KuoV.KingC.-T.ChangC.-P. (2010). Internet of toys: An e-pet overview and proposed innovative social toy service platform. In Proceedings of the 2010 international computer symposium, Tainan, Taiwan, 16–18 December 2010 (pp. 264–269). IEEE. doi:10.1109/COMPSYM.2010.5685507
70.
YangJ.LuZ.WuJ. (2018). Smart-toy-edge-computing-oriented data exchange based on blockchain. Journal of Systems Architecture, 87, 36–48. doi:10.1016/j.sysarc.2018.05.001
71.
YellandN. (1999). Technology as play. Early Childhood Education Journal, 26(4), 217–220. doi:10.1023/A:1022907505087
72.
ZamanB.Van MechelenM.BleumersL. (2018). When toys come to life: Considering the internet of toys from an animistic design perspective. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on interaction design and children, Trondheim, Norway, 19–22 June (pp. 170–180). ACM. doi:10.1145/3202185.3202745
73.
ZhangF.SunS.LiuC.ChangV. (2020). Consumer innovativeness, product innovation and smart toys. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 41, 1–13. doi:10.1016/j.elerap.2020.100974
