Children's entertainment over time
Medieval and Early Modern Children’s Play
Children’s play in medieval England was less clearly separated from adult activity than it is today. Young children had simple toys made from available materials: wooden horses and carts, clay figures, cloth dolls, and spinning tops. Archaeological excavations of medieval sites have recovered such objects, confirming that play was a recognised part of childhood. Children also participated in adult games and festivals from an early age.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, toys became somewhat more elaborate but remained homemade or locally crafted. Hobby horses — simple wooden sticks with a carved horse’s head — were among the most common children’s playthings recorded in sources from this period. Boys played versions of football and wrestling alongside adults; girls were more typically directed towards domestic activities and needlework, though they too played with dolls and participated in communal games on feast days.
Victorian industrialisation transformed children’s toys. Factory-produced toys became available for the first time, including tin trains, mechanical toys, wooden building blocks and porcelain dolls. The introduction of compulsory education from 1870 and growing middle-class prosperity drove demand for educational and recreational toys. Wealthy children could afford elaborate toy trains and dolls’ houses; poorer children still made do with homemade objects.
Victorian and Edwardian Comics
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the development of illustrated magazines and comics aimed at children. The comics industry grew alongside mass literacy, as the Education Act of 1870 brought compulsory schooling for all children. Comics offered affordable weekly entertainment: titles aimed at boys typically featured adventure, sport and humour, while girls’ comics emphasised friendship, home and romance.
The Beano launched in 1938 and the Dandy in 1937 — both published by D.C. Thomson in Dundee — became the most enduring British children’s comics of the twentieth century. The Eagle, launched in 1950 by clergyman Marcus Morris, targeted older boys with its distinctive combination of science fiction (Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future), adventure strips and educational content. At its peak in the 1950s, the Eagle sold nearly a million copies a week.
BBC radio provided dedicated children’s programming from its early years. Children’s Hour, first broadcast in 1922, offered stories, drama and music for younger listeners, and ran until 1961. Listen with Mother, aimed at the youngest children, ran from 1950 to 1982. When television reached British homes in the 1950s, children’s programming transferred quickly to the new medium.
Blue Peter launched on the BBC in October 1958 and has run continuously since, making it one of the longest-running children’s television programmes in the world. Watch with Mother (1950–1980) served pre-school children with puppet programmes including The Flowerpot Men and The Wooden Tops. Children’s television became a significant part of the BBC’s public service remit, providing programming that was both entertaining and educational.
The Video Game Revolution
The late twentieth century saw a new form of children’s entertainment that was interactive in a way no previous medium had been. Video games arrived in British homes with the Atari 2600 in the late 1970s and the rise of home computers such as the ZX Spectrum (1982) and the Commodore 64 (1982). Nintendo’s Game Boy (1989) and its console systems brought new levels of sophistication; the Sony PlayStation (1995) and its successors brought cinematic-quality graphics.
By the early 2000s, video games had become the dominant leisure activity for many children and teenagers. The industry’s global revenue surpassed that of cinema by the early twenty-first century. Games also changed the nature of play: it became more solitary and screen-based, and it extended into adulthood in a way that traditional children’s toys did not.
One of the most significant changes in children’s leisure from the late twentieth century was the decline of outdoor, unsupervised play. In the 1970s, a typical British child walked or cycled to school, played freely in the street or on waste ground, and ranged relatively widely without adult supervision. By the 2000s, parental fears about road traffic and stranger danger had dramatically reduced this freedom. Research by Play England found that children’s “home range” — the area within which they were allowed to roam freely — had shrunk by approximately 90% between the 1970s and the 2000s.
By the start of the twenty-first century, children’s leisure had shifted decisively from outdoor, unsupervised, physical play to indoor, screen-based, often solitary activities. This represented a radical break with centuries of tradition, in which children’s play had been primarily communal, physical and outdoor. The change was driven by technology, rising parental anxiety, traffic, and the entertainment industry’s targeting of children as consumers.