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