By Futurist Thomas Frey
In 2025, a small but striking cultural signal emerged from the wealthiest neighborhoods of San Francisco and Singapore: about 1% of families stopped buying toys altogether. Instead, they subscribed to “toy libraries”—services that deliver rotating collections of educational play objects every two weeks, then retrieve them for cleaning, sorting, and redistribution. Parents described the change as liberating. The clutter vanished. The guilt of overconsumption disappeared. Most surprisingly, the kids played more. With each new rotation came novelty, curiosity, and renewed engagement. It was the first hint that permanent ownership—a core feature of 20th-century childhood—might be on its way out.
By 2040, that fringe experiment has become the norm. Only about 12% of households now own toys outright, and those that do are mostly collectors, nostalgists, or families in remote regions beyond logistics networks.
Continue reading… “Children Who’ve Never Owned Toys”