• Asked by CS420 to Jack, Gem, Jermaine, Michelle, Steve on 10 Jun 2017. This question was also asked by Siiiiii.
    • Photo: Michelle Jamieson

      Michelle Jamieson answered on 10 Jun 2017:

      This is a tricky one, and there are lots of arguments for, and against Fidget Spinners. Some psychologists view them as a toy, and not as a treatment, while others think they can help. What they actually have done is open up discussion around what could be good for people coping with autism, or stress, or depression and the like. There is no scientifically backed research into Fidget Spinners (that I know of) yet, as they are quite new. I think whether they help or not really depends on what works for that person in particular!

    • Photo: Gemma Taylor

      Gemma Taylor answered on 12 Jun 2017:

      This isn’t my area of research. But from what I’ve heard that there are some benefits of fidget spinners. Interestingly, people have been using fidgety type things for 100s of years with the aim of improving attention and reducing stress. For example, Chinese Baoding Balls, or squishy stress balls. Some people are also naturally inclined to fidget, like playing with a pen, fiddling their thumbs, or playing with their hair.

      I’ve just had a quick look for some research about this, and I’ve not come across any good quality studies (this doesn’t mean that there aren’t any though!). Ideally you would want a study where students are randomly placed into two groups by flipping a coin. One group would be given the fidget spinner, and the other group given nothing, and students attention would be scored before and after using the fidget spinner. Then you can see which groups’ attention scores have improved.

    • Photo: Jermaine Ravalier

      Jermaine Ravalier answered on 12 Jun 2017:

      They’re not proven in any way so far because they’re so new – there’s been no time to investigate if they’re useful.

      I could see why they might be useful for some (e.g. lots of people have conditions which mean they like to perform repetitive behaviours like spinning a fidget spinner), so I see how that could work. However, it wouldn’t reduce stress in most people – if anything they’re a distraction (I have one next to me now and it really is just a distraction to me…). At school, for example, for most students they’re just another thing to distract students from their work (how many do you think you’ve seen confiscated in class?!?).

    • Photo: Steven Brown

      Steven Brown answered on 12 Jun 2017:

      The way research works is that it takes time to put together evidence – and then that evidence needs to be confirmed again and again under different circumstances before anyone agrees on it. In the case of fidget spinners, it’s too soon to know. There’s no evidence I know of at the moment to suggest it has any health benefits. It could be just a marketing sort of approach, like brain-training games on tablets, etc. There’s no real evidence for that either.

      Music is known to help people with autism – and lots of other impairments. There’s lot of research showing how so-called ‘music therapy’ (simply performing music with others) can really improve their lives in so many ways. One important one is emotion. Many people with autism struggle to identify emotions in others – this is so important for our species, to know what someone else is trying to communicate. Performing music really helps autistic people and brainscanning research confirms this.

      Musical instruments are quite cheap – most of them anyway – can be transported around, and are non-toxic, unlike drugs. That makes music ideal for improving health. It seems that we are born musical, and everyone understands it. If you play a piece of music from a film, for example, we will all recognise what sort of mood the filmmakers were trying to create in that scene. We just get it. It’s kind of like a real-life superpower that everyone has!

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