The benefits of using Lego as adults

I played with Lego well into my teens, building various things from my own imagination, using thousands of Lego bricks from countless Lego builds my younger brother and I amassed over our childhoods. Now in my mid-30s, I never expected to get into Lego again as an adult. That is, until a bit over 2 years ago, Natalie gifted me a Lego orchid.

I was hugely into orchids (I believe we had over 20 orchids already at that point), I really wasn’t sure I wanted one made of Lego. But a few days later, I opened the box and put the orchid together, and I was surprised by how much fun it was to build; how it was both stimulating and relaxing. Today is International LEGO Day, so I figured I would look into the research on the benefits of using Lego as (autistic/AuDHD) adults. Surely my positive experience isn’t unique to me?

How I got into Lego

I just briefly described how I got into Lego and what I got out of it, but there is more significance to it. Natalie gifted me the Lego orchid when I was doing an online addiction program in an attempt to quit my cannabis use, which I had struggled with for almost a decade. The program was fantastic; on 6 January I celebrated my 2-year sobriety! I was somewhat pleasantly surprised to find that I was far from the only neurodivergent person in the program. It seemed like everyone there had ADHD, and although there was only one other person who expressed being autistic, I was confident that autism was quite prevalent in our group as well. I said I was ‘pleasantly’ surprised for two reasons:

• It made me feel less alone. I not only found kinship in that group in our common struggle with addiction, but I could recognize my own neurodivergence and reasons for using drugs as a means to cope in others.
• As I learned later, autistic people are not only more likely to use drugs as a means to cope, but they are far more likely than neurotypical people to seek help for their addiction as well. I certainly saw that in our group.

I’m getting sidetracked a bit though, as this article is not about addiction—although using Lego can certainly be a significant (and healthy) means to cope. What I want to express is how meaningful my Lego orchid became for me. I was nearing the end of my addiction program at this point, so I had become quite connected with the others in my group. During our personal daily shares, I presented the Lego orchid I had built, and I was met with a lot of enthusiasm from the group. I don’t know if the Lego orchid invited a visceral response, or unlocked people’s nostalgia for their childhood, or what. But several people indicated that after my share, they had decided to get a Lego build of their own, and engage in the fun I had building my orchid. I guess I had given others an excuse to explore playing with Lego as adults, and it was wonderful.

The experience I had with my group imbued my Lego orchid with a lot more meaning than I expected it to get. It went from just a fun building project to something that touched others (and myself as a result) in very significant ways. So before looking at the benefits of using Lego, I want to offer you the same excuse to try it. No, it’s not just for children. You can have a lot of fun with it, get some extra stimulation, or give you something to focus on as you relax or regulate yourself.

I have since installed a lighting kit into my orchid, and Natalie and I recently built the Lego plum blossom, which I later also installed a lighting kit into for extra atmosphere. Natalie and I are now working on our biggest build yet—or my biggest build, anyway (she built the huge Lord of the Rings Rivendell model with her son): the Lego Milky Way!

The benefits of Lego for adults

Research on the benefits of Lego for autistic adults is scarce, so I conducted a poll in our Facebook group to get some data. Before I present that, let me briefly discuss the benefits of using Lego in adults in general. I would also like to add that—although there is no data to substantiate this idea—I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of adults using Lego are, in fact, neurodivergent.

In 2022, the Lego Group conducted a ‘Play Well’ study, polling 33,429 adults in 33 global markets about the benefits of play. They found that:^[1]Getting Hands On To Help Switch-Off | LEGO

• 93% of adults are regularly feeling stressed, and 80% are looking for new ways to relax
• 86% of adults said creative activities involving play help them unwind from work, while 89% said it keeps them mentally sharp
• 85% of adults said that play offers them relief from everyday life, chores, and worries
• 78% of adults believe doing something creative or manual feels more fulfilling than doing something passive (e.g., watching TV)

Of the over 33k adults that were polled, about 1,000 participants were Canadian. The results of this demographic showed that:^[2]Why adult fans of Lego agree brick-building is a mood-booster (MacDonald, 2023) | The Globe and Mail (archive.today)

• 67% of Canadians said Lego helped them relax
• 71% said it kept them mentally sharp
• 71% said it promoted creativity

Furthermore, Canadian Lego fans said that using Lego gave them transferable skills for everyday life. This is quite interesting, because research on Lego-assisted therapy on autistic children suggests it has longterm benefits in terms of social skills.^[3]Long-term outcome of social skills intervention based on interactive LEGO© play (Legoff & Sherman, 2006) A systematic review also found that the use of Lego has a myriad of benefits in professional development and education.^[4]LEGO for Professional Development: A Systematic Literature Review (Chasanidou & Raikou, 2024) Of course this is about practical and explicitly educational applications of Lego rather than transferable skills from casual play, but it’s clear that using Lego can have benefits not only for our mental health, but in terms of skills we can apply to our lives more generally, whether personal or professional.

Playing with Lego has enabled me to look at the world differently now. I notice the details and the beauty in things that I didn’t see before.

– Stacey Roy

The benefits of Lego for autistic adults

There isn’t really any data on the benefits of Lego for autistic adults, so I conducted my own poll in our Facebook group. The poll received 94 votes in total. Here are the results:

Of course these results aren’t scientific by any means. For one, two of the items (’It’s fun’ and ‘It’s meditative’) were added by participants later, so those who had already voted probably wouldn’t have seen those items; the percentages of these items may thus have been higher had I added them at the start of the poll. Secondly, Facebook polls record the number of votes, but not the number of participants, nor does it offer insight into the different demographics. I would be very interested to know how one’s gender affects the perceived benefits, and how our autism, ADHD, and anxiety scores correlate with the results. Are people who experience benefits from Lego more or less anxious than those who don’t experience distinct benefits?

Nevertheless, there are some interesting things to note about our poll results:

• We seem to care far less about promoting creativity (14% vs. 71%) and maintaining mental sharpness (4% vs. 71%) compared to Canadians who participated in the 2022 Lego poll. I think this may be because since our anxiety is so high, relaxation and anxiety reduction are going to be valued far more. Personally, I don’t feel using Lego hones my cognition per se; I rather play chess puzzles to keep my mental sharpness. It’s also possible that age is a factor here; it stands to reason that when you’re older and your memory isn’t what it used to be, you’re going to value keeping mentally sharp a lot more.
• I can’t fathom why so few voted for relaxation (34% vs. 67%) and anxiety reduction (20%) though. I mean, they’re still the two items we were most likely to vote on, but the relaxation score is about half as the Lego poll! It’s possible that this has more to do with how the poll was conducted though. For one, although you could vote on multiple items, I didn’t offer explicit instructions to vote on all the items that apply to you.
• It’s fascinating that virtually no one voted on ‘Promotes social skills’, since the research literature is almost solely focused on that (although with respect to Lego therapy for autistic children and adolescents, as opposed to autistic adults using Lego recreationally).^[5]Long-term outcome of social skills intervention based on interactive LEGO© play (Legoff & Sherman, 2006)^[6]Lego therapy: Building social skills for adolescents with an autism spectrum disorder (Levy & Dunsmuir, 2020) Although Amber Brown brought up a great point regarding body doubling and stimming:

I’m not sure if it would be in the same option as ‘promotes social skills’ but I find it great to socialize like body doubling. We have a fun task to do that has instructions if we are building the same set and everyone knows what to expect and how to proceed but you can still talk about other things. Or if you aren’t making the same thing it’s a good type of stim while socializing.

I completely agree! For Natalie and myself, collaboration is a big part of the fun. I should have added that as an item, actually. Natalie prefers to organize all the bricks by color, and will often find me the bricks I will need in the next step; whereas I prefer the building aspect. So we compliment each other perfectly in that regard, and the team work makes it a lovely experience. Or in some cases, such as with our Lego Milky Way, we both focused on completing one panel (out of a total of 15) each simultaneously. That was also nice, in particular because when we did that last week, I was working on a panel that was mostly purple (bottom left in the photo below), while she was doing a super colorful panel (the bottom right one with all the pink, magenta, orange, and beige). I was fascinated with how in her panel there were so many new colors being introduced, whereas my panel was homogenous and more about the flat pattern/texture. It was interesting to focus on such drastically different aspects of the build.

And it’s often nice to talk about our day, about things that challenge us, or about things we learned—while we build. It can be quite therapeutic, and it allows us to focus more on exchanging information, which we would be less inclined to do during a passive activity such as watching TV.

What autistics build with Lego

I also conducted a second poll where I asked what autistic people actually build. Do you follow the guide to build a particular kit, or do you come up with things yourself? Here are the results:

I’m actually a bit surprised how many do their own thing or are willing to deviate from the guide when it suits them. I find it quite satisfactory to follow instructions and complete a kit; but I must say, as a kid and teen I would often build my own things, and that was quite amazing as well—especially when it resulted in something really compelling, imaginative, and beautiful. I actually had most fun building the intended kit first, and doing my own thing at a later point. I also liked when there were multiple things you could build with the same kit. Is that still a thing?

Lego art

I would like to end this article by highlighting a multidisciplinary AuDHD (autism + ADHD) artist, Katherine Duclos, who uses Lego to create beautiful artworks with mesmerizing colors and textures. She became inspired when her autistic son (a savant who started building Lego kits at the age of 3) handed her four bricks because he thought she would like the way the colors worked together; she realized the many different colors, shapes, and sizes would lend themselves perfectly for her abstract constructions.

Katherine writes on her website:^[7]Lego Color Constructions | Katherine Duclos

I have trouble with instructions because my neurodivergent brain often flips the diagrams and I can’t spatially orient myself, leading to lots of mistakes, or being incapable of helping my son correct mistakes. At the time, though, he needed parallel play with me and one day handed me four pieces put together and said, “I thought you’d like these colors next to each other.” I did. In that moment, I realized that I did not have to build representational objects by a set of rules I couldn’t understand, but could instead use LEGO bricks as pieces of modular color for abstract constructions, helping me regulate and process the intense sensory overload I experience daily as an Autistic person with ADHD. Not only could use LEGO bricks similarly to bits of colored paper or paint, it is a dry medium, which is far preferable for me because of my sensory issues. I do frequently paint the bricks using spray paint, but not always.

Here are some of my favorites of her Lego-based creations, but I highly recommend checking her website for more:

How do you use Lego, and what benefits does it offer you?