[5] The idea is based on concepts developed in the 1970s by Nancy Ann Tappe,[6] who wrote that she had been noticing indigo children beginning in the late 1960s.
The concept of indigo children gained popular interest with the publication of a series of books in the late 1990s and the release of several films in the following decade.
The term "indigo children" originated with parapsychologist and self-described synesthete and psychic Nancy Ann Tappe, who developed the concept in the 1970s.
[10][8][26] The idea was later popularized by the 1998 book The Indigo Children: The New Kids Have Arrived, written by husband and wife self-help lecturers Lee Carroll and Jan Tober.
[29] Sarah W. Whedon suggests in a 2009 article in Nova Religio that the social construction of indigo children is a response to an "apparent crisis of American childhood" in the form of increased youth violence and diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
[29] According to research psychologist Russell Barkley, the New Age movement has yet to produce empirical evidence of the existence of indigo children, as the traits most commonly attributed to them are closely aligned with the Forer effect—so vague that they could describe nearly anyone.
Autism researcher Mitzi Waltz states that there may be inherent dangers to these beliefs, leading parents to deny the existence of impairments, avoid proven treatments and spend considerable money on unhelpful interventions.
In particular, he wrote that Nancy Ann Tappe derived some of her ideas from Charles Webster Leadbeater (her main innovation being emphasizing the connection between children and the color indigo), and that the New Age adoption of the concept is a reaction against diagnoses of ADHD and autism.
[36] At the 2014 University of Cambridge Festival of Ideas, anthropologist Beth Singler discussed how the term indigo children functioned as a new religious movement, along with Jediism.
[37][38] Singler's work focuses on the Indigo movement as a part of an overall discussion on "wider moral panics around children, parenting, the diagnosis of conditions such as ADHD and autism and conspiracy theories about Big Pharma and vaccinations.