Gadgets: Why kids prefer the real deal

A laptop lying on the table or the bed is an open invitation to my two-and-a-half-year-old niece, Eesha, to sit in front of it.

She has figured out that moving her finger on the track pad makes the “pointy thing” go here and there. While she can’t quite figure out letters on the keyboard, she finds it mighty good fun to bang both her palms on it. But she knows that she has to sit quietly for about a minute for the bubbles (screensaver) to appear.

At such times, if her mum attempts to talk to her, she turns, mustering up as much seriousness as she can manage, and says, “Go away. I am doing office work.”

Technology is an integral part of our lives, and by extension, the lives of our kids. However, though we can’t stop our kids from playing with gadgets, we fear that they may get addicted to games or access the Internet and get exposed to god-knows-what. Then there’s always a chance that they may drop that pricey tablet you bought last month.

The Barbie tablet
It is to address some of these concerns that manufacturers have come up with made-for-kids gadgets, which are available in toy stores. These smart phones, laptops and tablets are available in bright blues, yellows and pinks, and are built to withstand drops and rough use. One laptop in the market featured a full QWERTY keyboard and a mouse. The Barbie tablet had a functional touch screen, even if its response was sluggish, and yes, it was pink.

However, while the bodies were all bright, the screens were black and white. The interfaces were far from intuitive. Manufacturers of such gadgets point out that these aren’t meant for creating office documents, browsing the Internet or listening to music. Instead, they feature apps and games aimed at teaching kids numbers, the alphabet, and to improve their vocabulary. Moreover, while an adult may not appreciate this level of technology, for the kids it is appropriate.

The parents of three-year-old Shlok, however, beg to differ. “Seeing Shlok’s passion for mobile phones, we bought him a plastic phone to play with,” says his mother Leena Naik, “His fascination with it lasted for a few days. Nowadays, he prefers to play with one of the defunct mobile phones lying around the house, pretending he is talking on it. The point is to copy his father, and the real phone (though useless) is better than the toy.”

The blue laptop, a birthday gift, too suffers a similar fate.

“Shlok does play with it sometimes, but is entertained more by the nursery rhymes I show him on YouTube,” says Naik. On the flip side, few parents would be comfortable allowing their three-year-olds to browse YouTube without supervision. And that’s key when you allow your child to use a real gadget, say parents.

Take Kiana and Kaira, twins, who will turn two this March. They are allowed 15 minutes on iPad every week. Megha Ghosh, their mother, has downloaded apps that will introduce them to the alphabet, or animal sounds; there are games involving flash cards, which introduce them to animals and nature; and some games which Ghosh makes up. “For instance, I show them a picture of a door on the iPad and ask them to find the door in our house. I try to make it as interactive as possible,” says Ghosh, who is a teacher on sabbatical.

Real iPad more result-oriented
Kiana and Kaira have their toy phones too, but since the screen is not very attractive they respond more to the sounds the devices create, says Ghosh. She finds the iPad “more result-oriented”.

In a way, real gadgets force parents to get involved in order to observe how their kids are using the gadget. Toy gadgets, on the other hand, is something the kids play with on their own. According to Sharita Shah, woman and child psychiatrist, Bombay Hospital, “Using real gadgets under parental supervision teaches children the value of handling delicate devices in a proper way. It inculcates the value of sharing things.”

Some parents also observe that their children use made-for-kids gadgets for a very short duration. “Children need to be in at least upper kindergarten to fully appreciate alphabets and numbers,” says Vikram Panjwani, who has two daughters aged seven and two.

"By the time they are in standard two, computer education has started in schools, and so they lose all interest in such gadgets and want the real thing,” he says, adding that his daughter Aakanksha knows how to access iTunes and download games there. Meanwhile the younger has a kiddie laptop “because didi has one”.

But even Aakanksha gets to use the iPad only on weekends. “Her day is packed with school, tuition, homework, play and sleep. Now, the only way she can squeeze the iPad into her schedule is if she skips her play. And that we don’t allow her to do,” says Panjwani.

Ultimately parents and kids have their own reasons to skip the toy gadget and pick up the real thing. Now if only there was a way to make the iPad resistant to all the banging that my niece finds mighty good fun.