The Yoto Player Raises Hope for Non-Addicting Tech
12 years ago, Ben Drury realized that many things made for young children are linked to addictive technology in one way or another. He remembers shopping for his newborn in London and seeing a stroller for infants with a holder for an iPad. Mr. Drury also remembers instantly reacting against this and saying, “No way, this is really bad.”
Mr. Drury wondered if there was a technological product that could entertain and enrich children, while also not be addicting. He knew the fastest and simplest way for parents to play music for their children was from their phones, but he wanted to develop something that the kids themselves could learn to use.
This is when Mr. Drury, who is now 50, and his business partner Filip Denker, 49, came up with the idea to create a music player for kids.
The device, later named the Yoto Player, is a box encased in rubber that plays sound from a speaker when the child inserts a specific card into a slot. It also has two knobs, one for the child to select their preferred audio and the other to adjust the volume.
The Yoto Player has gained many fans with millions of devices sold. Some fans have even crafted accessories, like card organizers for the Yoto Player and sold them on Etsy.
Yoto now sells two sizes of its music player. One smaller model, Yoto Mini, for the price of $80, and the original Yoto Player that sells for $110. They also sell their audio cards through companies like Amazon and Target, usually between $7 to $15 each.
Yoto employs almost 250 people worldwide. Its competition is also a screenless audio player for kids, called the Toniebox.
Around the globe, the concern over too much screen time and addiction to social media for children has grown over the past few years. A trial in March, soon to be followed by another this July, took place in California and the jury found tech companies, Meta and Google, responsible for causing harm by designing their platforms to be addictive.
This shows that most tech companies are more concerned with developing addicting products rather than products that improve life.
Jim Steyer, Chief Executive of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit company that reviews products for families said, “Platforms built on algorithms and addiction are not built for children — they’re built for revenue…The parental fatigue, the overall fatigue from tech, is very real.”
The Yoto shows that there are still ways for any tech company to improve the world.
Mr. Drury and Mr. Denker used to work in the music industry where they gained lots of experience. They used their knowledge to develop the software and hardware design of the Yoto Player.
The Yoto is marketed as screen free even though it has tiny screens that show simple art related to the audio being played. Mr. Drury called this a “pixel display” since it is not the type of screen we know today.
Mr. Drury asked, “Is it doing anything that’s in any way addictive or would require a kid to concentrate on that image?…Could it display TikTok? Could it display YouTube? If the answer’s no, then it’s not a screen.”
The Yoto Player’s success story may be about a company creating an incredible product that gained much popularity, but it is also a despairing reminder of what the tech industry has grown into today.
Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/technology/personaltech/yoto-music-box-screens.html