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“In 1954, Walt Dis­ney was the first to envi­sion a new form of enter­tain­ment that meld­ed tra­di­tion­al fun and education—a form that he dubbed “edu­tain­ment.” By the lat­ter part of the 20th cen­tu­ry, this form had mor­phed into edu­ca­tion­al toys and games, a mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar indus­try that is pro­ject­ed to cap­ture a full 36 per­cent of the glob­al toy mar­ket share by 2022.

Nowhere is this trend more appar­ent than in the explo­sion of dig­i­tal apps: of the 2.2 mil­lion apps avail­able in the Apple Store, rough­ly 176,000—8.5 percent—are loose­ly des­ig­nat­ed as “ edu­ca­tion­al. ” Their growth con­tin­ues, with annu­al increas­es of 10 per­cent expect­ed through 2021. Whether called edu­tain­ment, edu­ca­tion­al toys, or the dig­i­tal learn­ing rev­o­lu­tion, this trend shares the implic­it phi­los­o­phy that mix­ing fun and learn­ing will offer a kind of “brain train­ing” that will enhance children’s think­ing and ampli­fy their learn­ing poten­tial.

But there are many ques­tions before us. What do man­u­fac­tur­ers and mar­keters mean when they des­ig­nate a prod­uct “edu­ca­tion­al?” Keep read­ing Brain Train­ing for Kids: Adding a Human Touch over at the Dana Foun­da­tion.

Related reading:

• Cog­ni­tive and Emo­tion­al Devel­op­ment Through Play
• Only 5% of US chil­dren ages 8–11 fol­low screen time, sleep and exer­cise guide­lines rec­om­mend­ed for brain devel­op­ment
• New book high­lights con­tin­ued brain devel­op­ment through­out ado­les­cence, even into our 20s

Over the next weeks we are going to be shar­ing the Exec­u­tive Sum­ma­ry of our mar­ket report The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008 with mem­bers and clients of sev­er­al part­ner orga­ni­za­tions (the British Colum­bia Seniors Liv­ing Asso­ci­a­tion, where I will be speak­ing this Thurs­day, Neu­rotech Reports, where I will speak on Octo­ber 24th, and the Health 2.0 con­fer­ence, where we are spon­sor­ing a pan­el on gam­ing for health), so it is only fair that we first share it with our own read­ers.

Exec­u­tive Sum­ma­ry

A spate of recent glob­al news cov­er­age on brain fit­ness and brain train­ing reflects a grow­ing inter­est in nat­ur­al, non drug-based inter­ven­tions to keep our brains sharp as we age. This inter­est is very time­ly, giv­en an aging pop­u­la­tion, increas­ing preva­lence of Alzheimer’s rates, and soar­ing health care costs in the US that place more empha­sis than ever on pre­ven­tion and lifestyle changes.

US brain fit­ness mar­ket: sig­nif­i­cant and grow­ing

We esti­mate the size of the US brain fit­ness mar­ket was $225m in 2007 – more than dou­ble what it was in 2005. Where­as K12 school sys­tems were the largest buy­ers in 2005, con­sumers were respon­si­ble for most of the growth from 2005 to 2007. We esti­mate that the con­sumer seg­ment grew from a few mil­lion in 2005 to $80m in 2007, and fore­see sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket growth dri­ven not only by con­sumers but also by health­care and insur­ance providers.

Mar­ket dynam­ics

As we speak to diverse audi­ences about this emerg­ing field around the coun­try we are fre­quent­ly asked the fol­low­ing ques­tions:

- Why are we talk­ing about the brain fit­ness field at all?

Over the past decade, teams backed by neu­ro­sci­en­tists around the world Read the rest of this entry »