Hannah Hagon is the Founder and Author of Unplugged Tots.
Unplugged Tots supports children, families, schools and businesses with screen free activities and experiences that introduce computational thinking concepts in children from the age of 2½ to teens.
She is also a Co-Director of STEAM Arena CIC providing 0-18 year old’s from under-represented sectors of society with quality STEAM experiences.
How did you land your current role? Was it planned?
I created my role as Founder of Unplugged Tots out of sheer necessity; it was completely unplanned. Coming from a background in IT training, marketing, and business development, I understood the digital landscape well. But as a mum, I saw a terrifying void: our youngest children were consuming information, being educated and entertained by screens at the expense of their foundational developmental skills. I realised I could bridge the gap by giving children crucial critical thinking and problem-solving skills completely offline. It was born out of my own experience and has evolved into something that is now supporting many families and schools internationally.
What are the key roles in your field of work, and why did you choose your current expertise?
My expertise is unique: I sit at the intersection of IT literacy, parenting and screen-free child development. I chose this specific path because my training background taught me how to break down complex systems and my corporate background showed me how what I wanted from a world that celebrates inclusivity, representation and quality communication and collaboration, while my experience as a mum taught me what families actually need. I specialise in creating tangible, offline frameworks and activities that prepare children for a digital world without damaging their early development. I want to celebrate our children being the creators of their entertainment, education and giggles not just the passive consumers of a screen.
Did you (or do you) have a role model in tech or business in general?
I admire Eben Upton, founder of Raspberry Pi because he saw a critical decline in computer science applicants at Cambridge University and took direct action to solve it, creating the cheap, accessible hardware that invited the next generation to tinker. Raspberry Pi is now floating successfully on the UK stock market with over 73 million Raspberry Pi’s shipped across the world.
What are you most proud of in your career, so far?
I am proud that I have achieved global commercial validation of my simple idea – learning tech through play. At a community event in Cambridge, I met the founder of Raspberry Pi, Eben Upton, which directly led to an international publishing deal for my book, “Unplugged Tots”. Upon launch, it achieved the number one spot for STEM Education New Releases, and it currently maintains a flawless record of 16 five star reviews on Amazon.
Today, there are now over 100 copies of the book established across American libraries, and copies have sold in South America, Europe, Australia and India. This widespread international adoption demonstrates the clear global rhetoric that families are actively seeking offline connection opportunities and need structural support to do it. The book itself is presented in a beautifully illustrated, comic style format to engage and delight readers.
Equally significant is the institutional credibility I have built. Collaborations with (UCL) and The Open University to scientifically validate my methods feel phenomenal to me as a non-academic. Furthermore, my election as an active Council Member of the Chartered Institute for IT (BCS), where I contribute to government consultations on youth technology, utilises my expertise and experience for the benefit of our next generation.
From an idea sparked at a community event, my proudest achievement, however, is proving that a mother on a mission can build a highly scalable, globally demanded enterprise.
Tell Us About Your Entrepreneurial Journey
My entrepreneurial journey began in 2018 at a Raspberry Pi tech festival, looking at the world through the eyes of my two and four year old daughters. Captivated by the flashing lights, they tried to use the early coding apps but were completely locked out because they couldn’t yet read, write, or navigate a mouse. It was a profound lightbulb moment. I realised the EdTech industry was addressing the early digital literacy gap in entirely the wrong format, by forcing toddlers onto screens. As a mother already battling screen time guilt, I didn’t want to outsource my children’s development to an app. I wanted to curate a world where they were creators of their own entertainment, not passive consumers. Driven by this fire, I founded Unplugged Tots from my kitchen table to prove a radical counter narrative, that we don’t always need tech to teach tech. The early days were an uphill climb. Balancing a demanding corporate career, serving four years as a Chair of Governors, and navigating the trials of the pandemic tested my resilience. Yet, in December 2024, I left the security of corporate life to pursue this passion full time. I had to trust my gut while the tech world rushed in the opposite direction, launching a technology education business by actively rejecting digital hardware. Pitching an entirely offline computing methodology to traditional educators was terrifying but exhilarating. Today, eight years after my initial spark, society is finally resonating with this rhetoric. When I took the screens away, magic happened. I watched children instinctively connect with the tactile nature of embodied cognition. They mastered complex computer science principles, like algorithms, sequencing, and debugging, not through a piece of glass, but by baking cakes, navigating obstacle courses, and fixing tumbling cardboard towers. Parents routinely shared their relief at finding an educational space that was family friendly, accessible, and beautifully, positively messy. To back my methods with rigorous science, I have collaborated on research projects and articles with University College London (UCL) and The Open University.
I got here by refusing to compromise on human connection. I am a mother on a mission to preserve the wonder, curiosity, and slow dopamine of childhood, championing screen free play before pixels to raise a resilient generation that celebrates technology as an enabler for humanity, but never relies on it.
Have you ever faced insecurities and anxieties during your career, and how did you overcome them?
I battled a deep fear of visibility. It is incredibly lonely and vulnerable to run in the exact opposite direction of the rest of humanity. Standing up in front of traditional educators and tech leaders to tell them that the multi billion pound EdTech narrative is failing our children felt terrifying. I had to learn to trust my gut, embrace that friction, and realise that true disruption looks counter intuitive to people caught up in the rush. Furthermore, with my deep knowledge of big tech, neuroscience, and cognition comes an overwhelming sense of responsibility. While society aggressively pushes algorithms and pixels onto our kids, I am very aware of what we are doing to the next generation. As a mother, friend, parent, and founder, I feel I am constantly treading a tightrope to enable and empower everyone. I am at a really interesting intersection of modern parenting, tech awareness, cognitive development, academic rigour, education, and public health, and it is both fascinating and heavy. The friction I experience on my own lounge floor is the exact screen time guilt that corporate working parents are drowning in. By being honest about my own struggles, I found my greatest commercial strength. My challenges have given me the precise insight needed to design high value corporate well being packages and educational frameworks that actually work, turning my personal battle into a globally viable solution. The one thing I keep coming back to now is that I do our next generation a disservice if I don’t speak up.
