Stuffed! Teens' Christmas stockings this year are worth £70

As for chocolate coins, they may be too polite to say so, but they’d rather have real ones.

Traditional Christmas stocking gifts like colouring pencils, dates, a Yo-yo and a perhaps a lucky charm, have not kept pace with the expectations of younger recipients, according to researchers.

Instead, they look for small gadgets like smartphones and fitness bands, no matter how much the cost.

As a result, the value of the average stocking has risen from just a few pence a generation ago, to more than £70 today, without even taking into account the larger gifts stacked under the tree.

Around one in four adults are considering putting tablets and action cameras into their family’s stockings in two weeks’ time, a Barclaycard survey suggests.

The cheapest Amazon Kindle tablet is about £50, while GoPro action cameras, which record video while strapped to a helmet or handlebar, typically cost around £200. Fitness bands, whose small packaging also makes them a good fit for a medium stocking, are easier to buy with prices starting at less than £20. But more desirable models run well into three figures.

The most expensive teenagers to buy for, says the survey, are 15 year-olds, who can this year expect gifts worth an average of nearly £120 in their stockings alone.

More than a quarter of parents surveyed said they would succumb to “pester power” to buy the trendiest gifts, and a third said they would buy an expensive gadget if their children had talked about it for a long time.

In contrast, only one in five said they would pack a satsuma into this year’s stocking, even though nearly half recalled receiving one themselves as children.

Researchers said the miniaturisation of sought-after items, such as the hand-held Gameboy consoles and Tamagotchi “digital pets” of the 1990s had helped to steadily push up the value of stocking gifts.

Paul Lockstone, managing director at Barclaycard, said stockings had “firmly kept pace with technology”.

He said: “This year’s lucky recipients are just as likely to pull out an Apple as they are a satsuma, or find a GoPro alongside chocolate coins.”

The good news for parents and grandparents is that the expectation of high-value stocking gifts diminishes as youngsters leave their teens.

Anne-Marie O’Leary, editor-in-chief of the website Netmums, said many teenagers aspired to the use the same technology as their parents.

“For many families, Christmas wouldn’t be the same without the traditional stocking, no matter how old we are,” she said.

“As we know from talking to parents, if children are used to seeing us using smartphones and tablets at home, they’re bound to want to get connected themselves, which is why they’re increasingly making their way into Christmas stockings.”

Parents wishing to give just a nod to current trends can have the best of both worlds, with a smartphone made of milk chocolate for the old-fashioned price of £2.75.