Lego for adults: how toy building sets have become mindfulness tools for adults, offering stress relief and a focus on the present

Lego has found a new audience in adults as a mindfulness tool – fitting the plastic bricks together can help people enter a Zen state of mind

‘The repetition of Lego ensures that you are able to be in the moment,’ says a psychologist. And a millennial says just sorting the pieces is therapeutic

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Many adult fans of Lego have discovered it can help them to de-stress. They describe how it helps them focus on the present and to be mindful. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 4:15pm, 25 Dec 2022Updated: 5:41pm, 25 Dec 2022

You might have played with Lego – its plastic bricks, people, windows, doors, bushes and myriad other shapes in a kaleidoscope of colours – as a child.

Now it has found new fans among frazzled adults – as a mindfulness tool.

Despite the rise of video games and the internet, Lego continues to captivate, 90 years after the Lego Group began its life in Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Kristiansen’s workshop. The name came from an abbreviation of the Danish phrase leg godt, meaning “play well”.

Vlada Botoric, an assistant professor at Zayed University in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, has researched the Lego fandom, or fan community. In a study published in the Journal of Consumer Culture in 2021, he noted that there are more than 360,000 adult members of the Lego community worldwide.

Some adult fans of Lego find using their hands to build something makes them happy. Photo: Shutterstock

In 2019, after a survey found high levels of stress and worry in adults, the Lego Group developed kits aimed at grown-ups who want to wind down, decompress and practise mindfulness.