Bright blue, pink and purple Nee-Doh cubes had gained popularity across the Archer campus. From the fidget toys you can rent from Learning Services to the free toys from the counselors’ office, fidget toys have become more popular among students. No matter the grade, someone is likely tinkering with a fidget toy in or out of class.

Fidget and stress toys are tools designed to alleviate stress and anxiety, and they are most commonly designed for people with ADHD. The fidget spinner craze of 2017 helped popularize the usage of fidget toys; however, their ubiquity had died out due to numerous school-wide bans. Additionally, COVID-19 brought a plummet in fidget toy usage, to the extent that the search for fidget toys reached their lowest levels between 2020 and 2021.

Fidget toys often cater to adolescents and are used primarily in school settings. At Archer, students can borrow more expensive fidget toys, such as the NeeDoh Cube, from Learning Services and obtain free fidget toys, such as stress balls and Squishies, from the school counselor’s room.

School counselor Erica Greene said that she’s noticed more sixth through ninth graders take fidget toys than 10th through 12th graders. Greene added that stress toys can benefit people of all ages.

“Stress toys can be a really useful tool for kids and adults who have who either have nervous energy or who feel like they need to ground their bodies while they’re trying to focus with their brains,” Greene said. “Stress toys can provide an outlet for that energy or a focal point for their energy.” 

Senior Rachel Chung said she has played with fidget toys since elementary school and has just recently noticed more of her peers using fidget toys, specifically the Nee-Doh cube. Chung said playing with stress toys helped her mitigate her habit of picking her nails, and she enjoys how stress toys can be used in any setting.

“For me, it helps me to focus a lot. I get very physically antsy a lot, and so, when I’m doing my work, it’s nice to have something that I can take out while I’m doing my work,” Chung said. “It just helps me to hone in my work better in class [and] focus on the material.”

Junior Stella Leland said they prefer to use stress balls and mochi squishies as a way to help their concentration rather than release stress or anxiety.

“I use them less for actual stress and more just as something to fidget with, which could be stress-related. But most of the time it’s just concentration-related, so that if I have something to do, I can concentrate better on the thing I’m actually supposed to be doing,” Leland said. “[Playing with fidget toys] works better than doodling for me, which works for a lot of people. To me, that takes up more of my attention, versus something like this allows me to get out that other energy while still being able to concentrate on my actual work.”

Referencing the added anxiety from the college process for seniors, Chung said stress and fidget toys became a way to release any extra stress.

“My grade is really loving stress toys right now. I think it’s because it’s also just a stressful time—we’re trying anything to kind of mitigate that stress,” Chung said. “Stress balls turn into a fun, simple little outlet for our stress that we can just have at every moment of the day.”

When it comes to trends surrounding stress toys, Leland said they mostly hear about popular toys through their friends and classmates.

“It comes and goes, there’s surges of popularity,” Leland said. “I remember when I was in elementary school, the fidget spinner was really popular, and then that became less popular. And now there’s the ice cube, so I feel like a lot of people still use them consistently.”

Chung said that while stress toys are an effective way to release stress, they can also be distracting when used during class or when learning new material.

“It can definitely get distracting at a certain point. If everyone has one, everyone’s passing it to their friends or whatnot. But I do think it’s more helpful than it is a distraction,” Chung said. “It depends on each teacher, each class … I would respect their decisions on fidget toys in the classroom.”

While stress toys have gained popularity, Chung said that schools should take more precaution taken when advertising them to a student audience. Chung also said that as helpful as fidget toys can be, she believes schools can offer other ways for students to manage stress.

“It’s great that the school counselors have [stress toys] in their office, but I don’t know if it’s should be something that’s advertised because that could be crossing the line into more of a distracting thing. I don’t know schools need to focus on [giving stress toys to students],” Chung said. “But, I love that there’s still an option for students to initiate different ways to manage their stress levels.”

This story was originally published on The Oracle on November 10, 2024.