We looked at how children use SkyBuds at home: how often a toy is picked up, how long a chat lasts, what time of day it happens and which topics come up. The numbers come from the toys’ own logs: counts, times and topic categories. Topic categories come from matching a fixed keyword list against the transcripts of what children said. No words a child said, no names and no single family appear anywhere in this study.
Who is counted: 481 SkyBuds in 421 family homes: every family SkyBud with a current parent consent that had at least one play session in which the child spoke, from October 9 to October 26, 2026, in each toy’s own time zone. That is 481 of the 492 family SkyBuds with a current parent consent whose first play session was on or before October 26. Every number below covers at least 20 toys.
What we found
- On days it was used, 2 sessions. On a day a toy was used, the median toy had 2 play sessions (the middle half of toys had between 1.25 and 2.667).
- Many SkyBuds had only just started. Counting from each toy’s first play session (or October 9, if that came earlier), the median toy had 3 days in the window. The median toy was used on 2 days (mean 2.281), and 67.8% of those days in the window had a session.
- Kids and toys take turns. In the median session the child spoke 83 times and the toy spoke 80 times.
- A median session runs 33.883 minutes from the first word to the last, with 16.2 minutes of back-and-forth talk.
- Late afternoon and early evening are the busiest hours. Each hour from 5:00 to 7:59 pm local time held at least 9% of sessions, and the single busiest was 7:00 to 7:59 pm, with 10.8%. 22.5% of sessions started in the bedtime hours, 7:00 to 9:59 pm.
- Family comes up most. Children mentioned family in 67.3% of sessions, followed by animals (47.1%) and food (34.3%).
A typical session
| Measure | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sessions per toy, on a day it was used | 1.25 | 2 | 2.667 |
| Times the child spoke, per session | 28 | 83 | 222.5 |
| Times the toy spoke, per session | 80 | ||
| Session length, first word to last (minutes) | 13.3 | 33.883 | 70.825 |
| Back-and-forth talk per session (minutes) | 16.2 |
2,315 sessions from 481 toys. The mean number of sessions per toy per day of use was 2.088.
When kids talk to their SkyBud
| Local time | Share of sessions | Sessions | Toys |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10:00 pm to 11:59 am | 28.0% | 649 | 271 |
| 12:00 pm to 3:59 pm | 22.5% | 521 | 276 |
| 4:00 pm to 6:59 pm | 26.9% | 623 | 355 |
| 7:00 pm to 9:59 pm (bedtime hours) | 22.5% | 522 | 307 |
By hour, only hours with at least 20 toys are shown:
| Hour starting | Share of sessions | Sessions | Toys |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6:00 am | 2.3% | 53 | 48 |
| 7:00 am | 5.0% | 116 | 97 |
| 8:00 am | 4.7% | 108 | 88 |
| 9:00 am | 4.2% | 98 | 84 |
| 10:00 am | 3.6% | 84 | 71 |
| 11:00 am | 4.1% | 94 | 80 |
| 12:00 pm | 4.9% | 114 | 93 |
| 1:00 pm | 4.0% | 93 | 77 |
| 2:00 pm | 5.2% | 120 | 104 |
| 3:00 pm | 8.4% | 194 | 156 |
| 4:00 pm | 7.9% | 182 | 158 |
| 5:00 pm | 9.2% | 214 | 169 |
| 6:00 pm | 9.8% | 227 | 186 |
| 7:00 pm | 10.8% | 251 | 193 |
| 8:00 pm | 7.5% | 173 | 140 |
| 9:00 pm | 4.2% | 98 | 77 |
| 10:00 pm | 2.1% | 48 | 42 |
The other 7 hours (midnight to 5:59 am, and 11:00 to 11:59 pm) each had fewer than 20 toys, so they are not shown one by one. Together they hold the other 48 sessions (2.1%), from 38 toys.
What kids talk about
The eight topics children mentioned in the most sessions, counted from the child’s own words only (not the toy’s lines). A session can have several topics, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
| Topic | Share of sessions | Sessions | Toys |
|---|---|---|---|
| Family | 67.3% | 1558 | 439 |
| Animals | 47.1% | 1091 | 382 |
| Food | 34.3% | 795 | 337 |
| Pets | 27.2% | 629 | 289 |
| Bedtime and sleep | 24.4% | 564 | 314 |
| Music | 18.4% | 426 | 223 |
| Body and health | 16.5% | 381 | 226 |
| Games | 14.0% | 324 | 203 |
Languages
We do not report languages in this study. The language of each conversation is not recorded yet, so we cannot count how many languages kids used.
What this study does not tell you
- It describes use only. It says nothing about learning, development, sleep, behavior or wellbeing, and it should not be read that way.
- Families who chose a SkyBud may use a talking toy differently from families in general.
- It covers 18 days in October. Use in other months, or after a toy has been in a home for longer, may look different.
- 481 toys is still a small sample. Treat the numbers as a first look, not a national average.
- Topics come from keyword matches, not from someone reading the conversations. We have not measured how often a match is wrong: a child calling out to “mom” counts as family, for example.
How we did it
- Window: local days October 9 to October 26, 2026 (18 days), in each toy’s own time zone, taken from the toy’s profile. One toy had no time zone saved, so its single session uses our default time zone.
- Toys: SkyBuds bound to a family account that had at least one session in the window (481 of the 492 family SkyBuds with a current parent consent whose first play session was on or before October 26, 2026). We left out toys belonging to our team, testers, the factory and creators, accounts we could not verify as a family, and toys on development firmware.
- Consent: a parent sets up and approves every SkyBud. We counted every family account whose parent consent is current, that is, not withdrawn, read the same way the SkyBuds app reads it.
- Session: one toy’s conversations with no gap longer than 15 minutes, in which the child spoke at least once.
- Times the child spoke: the number of separate things the child said, as transcribed by the toy’s speech recognition. Background noise heard as speech can add to this count.
- Session length: first start to last end of the session. Back-and-forth talk adds up only the gaps of 60 seconds or less between messages.
- Sessions per toy per day: for each toy, its sessions divided by the number of days it had at least one session; then the 25th percentile, median and 75th percentile across the 481 toys.
- Time of day: the local hour a session started. Bedtime hours are 7:00 to 9:59 pm.
- Topics: a fixed list of 38 topic categories (such as family, food or animals), each with its own keyword list. We match the keywords against the child’s lines only; the toy’s lines and conversation summaries are not used. Each child line that contains a topic’s keyword counts once for that topic; a conversation keeps its 3 most-mentioned topics, and a session’s topics are those of its conversations. The matching runs inside our database. We publish category names and counts only, never what was said.
- Privacy rule: every published number covers at least 20 toys. Smaller groups are merged or left out, and we checked that a hidden group cannot be worked out from the others: the hours not shown one by one cover 38 toys together.
- Numbers: medians and percentiles are computed in SQL (PostgreSQL
percentile_cont) to 3 decimal places and shown here exactly, without trailing zeros. Shares are the SQL value as a percentage. - Data: computed on October 28, 2026 from our play-session tables. The full results are in the CSV below.
Download the data
how-kids-talk-to-a-toy.csv has every number on this page with its toy and session counts. Questions about the method? Email hello@getskybuds.com.
Changes in v1.1
October 28, 2026: topics are now counted from children’s own lines by keyword lists only. Version 1.0 topic counts also included the toy’s own lines and conversation summaries; version 1.1 counts topics from children’s words only, tagged with the keyword lists described above. We also added how many consented toys were counted and how many days each toy was used.
Version 1.1. Published October 28, 2026. Last reviewed: October 28, 2026. Published by Firefly Jar, Inc., the maker of SkyBuds.