Kids’ Apps Are Crammed With Ads
Father of two little guys of 7 &amp; 5 here. Personal story below.<p>There&#x27;s no tablets at home, no games on parent&#x27;s smartphones. They have access to technology thought. But we are a &quot;NO ADS ALLOWED HERE&quot; kind of home :)<p>Netflix is freely accessible on the only TV we have, during &quot;opening hours&quot;, so that they can choose actively their program and not be exposed to TV ads (the TV has only access to Netflix).<p>They can switch on a Raspberry with an emulator where they can play some games from the 80&#x2F;90&#x27;. But they have to enter one command on the little Bluetooth keyboard (and they do!).<p>And finally they can sit at the home&#x27;s PC, start windows, ask parents to open their session and launch complex games such as Age Of Empire.<p>No internet access, only books for now.<p>When they happen to be exposed to TV ads at grand-parents home, for ex, you can really see what kind of behavior ads are ingraining in little brains: &quot;I want this!&quot;, &quot;Why is this so short?&quot;, &quot;Why don&#x27;t they tell the price?&quot;. That&#x27;s always an opportunity for me to educate them to what&#x27;s actually happening before their eyes: &quot;look guys, this is a company (some people at work) that&#x27;s working to expose their products (toys) to your eyes, hoping that you will ask your parents to spend money to buy it. They&#x27;re smart, but we are smarter!&quot;.<p>I&#x27;m very inclined to think that toddlers should not have access to tablets, moreover to mainstream games on Android&#x2F;Iphone. My personnal guess is that It&#x27;s not preparing them to mastering technology, it&#x27;s preparing them to be <i>addicted</i> to technology.