Children's Social Relationships With Current and Near-Future Robots

Children will come of age with increasingly sophisticated social robots, which mimic both animal and human form. Will children develop social and even moral relationships with these robots? In this article, we review some of the research that suggests that the answer is yes. We propose that through the creation of social robots, a new ontological category is emerging, one that does not map onto humans, animals, or artifacts. We raise the concern that because these robots can be conceptualized as both social entities and objects, children might dominate them and reify a masterservant relationship, and that in such ways, this could lead to detrimental developmental outcomes, even as the robots benefit children in other ways. We also call on the developmental field to recognize the exponential growth of technological systems in children's lives, and to be future oriented to remain relevant.