For children, podcasts are a way to satiate their curiosity. For their parents, they’re a way to sharpen their focus
Two-year-old Aaradhya loves listening to activity and music-based podcasts, which combine lullabies and rhythms with sensory movements. Pic/Sameer Markande
If you think kids can’t sit still and listen to a podcast, think again. Two-year-old Aaradhya Adukia, dressed in pretty pink, ambles about her Nepean Sea Road residence, singing “brown bear, brown bear” to herself. Her mother, Dr Vanshika Adukia, says she picked this up from a podcast based on a book of the same name, by Eric Carle. “She knows the book inside out, and when she listens to the podcast, she can rattle it off—word for word,” she says. “The podcast helps when we don’t have the book around and she wants to listen to her favourite story.”
With a number of offerings like stories, poems and lullabies, and educational content like science and trivia, children’s podcasts have emerged as a way for parents to get their children to stop staring at screens. Mansi Zaveri, the founder of the parenting platform Kidsstoppress.com, says that an increasing number of parents are using the audio medium as a way to help their kids learn.
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The platform was founded in 2013 as a response to the lack of parenting information available, and then branched out with its own podcasts in 2017 dedicated to simplifying current affairs for kids. “Our aim was to ensure that children aren’t left out of dinner-table conversations,” the mother of two says. “Kids should also have a say in what is happening in the world. That’s why we introduced this concept of bite-sized news for little minds.”
Mansi Zaveri, founder of Kidsstoppress, says that children love listening to podcasts that teach them interesting trivia about the world
The Kidsstoppress episodes are short segments of two to five minutes each, and earn about 50,000 to 60,000 streams on average. They delve into the nuances of subjects without being jargon-heavy. The Knock Knock jokes series is also a favourite among kids. “If my kid asked me the difference between a hurricane and a tornado, I would honestly have to go back and Google the answer,” Zaveri explains. “Podcasts are a way to feed their curiosity, and give them precise information at the same time.”
But how do you get a hyperactive, distracted kid to sit still and listen? One approach is designing podcasts to retain attention by adding repetitive audio elements at regular intervals. “For example, when we talked about the launch of the Vande Bharat Express on one of our episodes, we used a lot of sounds, like the noise of trains running on the tracks,” Zaveri says. “This brings the listener’s attention back to the audio, even if they happened to be distracted in between.”
The other method is incorporating podcasts into a routine. For Rushita Sheth, mother to a six-year-old, listening to podcasts has become a regular fixture of the week, while they drive to and from school, or go on a long trip. “She prefers simple, factual podcasts, like the Sink and Float podcast,” she says.
Kavita Rajwade and Gaurav Gupta
“It may seem like children aren’t paying attention, but they can grasp a lot of information,” says Vanshika Adukia.
Aaradhya has been listening to podcasts for eight months now, while she prepares for bed or sits down with her colouring books. “I see her repeating so many of the things she hears, although she can’t speak in full sentences yet,” Adukia recalls. “Last week, I noticed that she was counting numbers beyond 20, which her play school hasn’t taught her yet.”
Adukia, who is a pregnancy and childbirth expert, views podcasts as a medium to help children develop their focus and patience—especially in the absence of visual stimuli. “She had to sit, listen and engage with the information herself, without other kids surrounding her, and now she’s perfected it,” she smiles. “Children are a lot more perceptive to their senses—including sound—than adults.”
Kavita Rajwade, co-founder of IVM Podcasts-Pratilipi, says podcasts can also help kids build on their imagination—a challenge today because of the easy availability of visual content.
In this segment of the audience, international creators dominate the market. Names like But Why, Brains On, and Circle Round appear in the searches for ‘top kids podcasts’. The top genres are stories, with science coming a close second. Domestically, while Indian kids are consuming a lot of audio content, podcast creators are few and far in between.
Rajwade cites the inherent responsibility to provide appropriate information—for young and impressionable minds—as the reason for this lack. IVM itself did an experimental podcast during the lockdown, called News Kids on the Block, a by-kids, for-kids news podcast, which ran for about 100 episodes. “While we couldn’t continue the podcast due to logistical issues, many parents loved how their children were able to disconnect from the screen,” she says.
Chimes is among the anomalies; started in 2020, it is a Gurugram-based podcast platform specifically dedicated to producing content for Indian kids, such as Akbar-Birbal stories, tales from mythology, and educational audio shows. Founder Gaurav Gupta says that he started the platform to address the gap in the Indian market. Since its launch, the volume of streams has increased 25 times over.
“Distribution platforms like Jio Saavn, Gaana and Spotify now have designated categories for kids on their podcast homepages, which wasn’t the case before. We have about five to six podcasts from Chimes listed in the top 100, globally,” he shares. “Parents have started to realise the downside of video content, and are looking for other ways to engage their kids.”
And it’s not just kids who love their pods. It’s helping their mamas and papas to have informed conversations with them. “Co-consumption is fun. We sit together, her in my lap, and then we listen to a podcast, followed by experiments,” Sheth says.
Zaveri says that the kids surprise her. “They actually reach out to me [through their parents’ social media] and say things like, ‘Hey Mansi! Did you know that Crocs have 13 holes?’” Zaveri laughs. “I feel that I, too, am learning a lot through these podcasts.”
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