The Kids and Tech Debate

Fisher-Price's "Laugh and Learn Baby iCan Play" iPhone case

Over the past two weeks, the U.S. media has been circling the issue of young children and technology. The catalyst for the discussion may have been this viral video of an infant trying to pinch and zoom a paper magazine. The commentary went something like this: Tech bloggers: “Hilarious! She thinks it’s a broken iPad.” Luddites: “Frightening! Why has this baby been playing with an iPad so much?” Magazine people: “Oh god, this is the future. We’re doomed.”

Then came last week’s article in the New York Times about Silicon Valley's Waldorf School of the Peninsula, one of hundreds of Waldorf elementary schools worldwide that teach through play and hands-on activities like crafts and baking. The Waldorf philosophy was developed by German philosopher Rudolf Steiner at the turn of the 20th century, long before children could interact with screens, and the schools today discourage families from allowing kids to use technology until at least adolescence.

The gist of the Times article was something like this: “Some executives at Apple, eBay and Google send their kids to a school that bans technology. Does this mean technology is bad for kids? Are they onto something... or crazy?” And then Twitter and the blogospheres filled with debate on both sides of the kids-and-tech issue. A few bloggers wrote that depriving kids of digital media is doing them an educational disservice, or potentially setting them back so far that will be difficult to catch up later with the skills of their peers. Other people argued that technology is pervasive in our lives, easy to learn, and adopted by kids so quickly that there’s absolutely no harm in introducing it later.

In the same week as this debate flared up, HTC made waves by acquiring Zoodles, a platform that allows parents to lock down Android phones with “Kid Mode,” in which all functions move to the background except for a selection of age-appropriate apps curated by Zoodles’s educational experts for each of your children. Kid Mode is a brilliant idea that probably would have been very useful to my friend Mark, whose 7-year-old managed to buy $750 in Android apps while holding his phone for 20 minutes. Or to the woman a Zoodles employee told me about, whose 4-year-old used her phone to take a photo of her naked in the shower…. and then posted it to Facebook.

These incidents underscore the fact that we’re entering a new parenting frontier. In today’s world, it’s not a question of whether your kids will use technology—digital devices are everywhere. Rather, it’s a question of when they will use it, how much, and perhaps most importantly, what kinds of content you will allow them to consume.

Our friends at Toca Boca specialize in making touchscreen apps that provide the sorts of healthy play experiences kids seek in the real world—construction, make-believe, active play, artistic play, etc. Earlier this week, their best-selling Toca Hair Salon app was awarded a prestigious NAPPA (North American Association of Parenting Publications Awards) Gold prize.

There may be dangers associated with the overuse of technology by young children. And there may be a reasonable minimum age for using digital devices: the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends very limited screen time for children under age 2. But with sensible parental guidance, we at Bonnier R&D believe that digital devices have an appropriate place in the lives of kids. The key is to provide them with digital experiences that—just like any other toy we’d give them—are creative, beautiful, educational and highly interactive.