Parents found two very different bedtimes in an AI story app trial

One father found a new evening ritual: his son reminded him when they missed their shared reading. Another parent found the story app a poor fit for winding down. “Definitely not an evening thing, not a before-bed thing,” one mother told Nesta. Her child was keen to keep using it and sometimes resisted stopping.[3][1]

These accounts come from Nesta’s 2024 partnership with TANDEM, an app for creating stories with generative AI. Researchers worked with parents and caregivers of children under five in Edmonton and Feltham in London. Nine of the 11 adults interviewed in depth joined a month-long home pilot. This was a small qualitative project about their experiences and routines.[2][1]

What an engaging AI story is being asked to replace matters. A familiar book before sleep, a tablet playing videos and an evening without a shared reading routine are different starting points.

The parent was already making things up

During the earlier interviews, one mother described improvising stories from a book’s illustrations. Her daughter could not yet read the words, so the mother invented an account that matched the pictures. She enjoyed that creative role. She also described the weariness of being asked to read the same book repeatedly.[2]

TANDEM offered another way to make a story together. The research team asked its developers to shorten generation waits, keep illustrations more consistent and make the controls easier to understand. Families wanted characters and settings they could recognise.[2]

The parent’s appetite for a fresh story mattered alongside the child’s enjoyment. Personalisation had a social purpose: giving two people something they wanted to attend to together.

Excitement had different consequences

In its final reflections, Nesta reports that some caregivers who had not established a reading routine began one. Some families also described replacing passive video watching with shared story creation. For families already reading physical books before bed, the app could instead extend the activity and make it more stimulating. Its attraction was part of both experiences.[3]

Researchers asked pilot participants to use the app when it felt natural. They combined app activity records with paper diaries covering digital and physical reading, weekly diary photographs and follow-up calls. That approach could reveal a change in the family’s evening beyond the number of stories generated inside the app.[1]

Reading these accounts together suggests that an app can be welcome as an activity to begin and awkward as an activity to end. A child wanting another story may delight a parent starting shared reading. The same request can be difficult when everyone is trying to finish an already settled routine.

The partnership ended in September 2024. Nesta characterised the findings as encouraging anecdotal and qualitative evidence, with child-development effects still a question for later evaluation.[3]

One mother reported that TANDEM led her daughter to ask for physical books at bedtime. The app had helped open a reading routine that could continue away from the device. In that account, the next book mattered more than keeping the child inside the app.[1]

Report an error or suggest a correction