A Dad’s Plea To Developers Of iPad Apps For Children

My two-year old loves to push buttons. Remote controls, toys, any buttons with some feedback (and many without) are fair game. On iPad/iPhone, spends as much time on any typing app watching letters appear as he does on a game (only tried a game or two). Trickiest bit really is getting him out of whatever menu he wanders into - author was dead-on there.

TV he'll watch for 10-15 minutes and wander/play with something else, sometimes glancing up when something catches his attention.

I'm with you that with either device these are doses of 15-20 minutes not "babysitting." But "at all" is extreme.

I've got two kids and what I would add to the observations listed in this article are as follows (these apply to any app that is intended for kids, but also apps where a significant section of the userbase might be kids - for example, my four-year-old is quite adept at Plants vs. Zombies, and given the depth of strategy utilized in that game I don't feel bad when he plays it):

1. No part of the application should require that you can read in order to use it or navigate it.

2. Don't pop up dialogs that a child cannot understand. For example, I watched as my child, while using an app intended for children, pressed "OK" on a dialog that asked if he wanted to turn on push notifications. That's just ridiculous! He'll press "OK" on any dialog because he just wants it to go away.

3. This really applies to all applications, but it becomes very apparent when watching a child use an app: the most desirable menu items should be larger and/or differently coloured than the least desirable ones. I.e. "Play" should be a big, brightly coloured button, while "Settings" should be small and tucked away.

4. Don't make it easy to do destructive things like delete accounts. This might seem obvious, but I have more than once opened an app only to find that my progress in it had vanished because my child had deleted my account (Plants vs. Zombies makes this too easy, for example).

5. On any app that has the potential to be enjoyed by both kids and adults, consider providing a kid-friendly mode that makes the game easier.

6. I don't know how difficult this is from a development perspective, but if possible, make the app resistant to having non-active fingers touching the screen while active fingers are attempting to use it. Kids will often grasp devices, especially phones, in such a way that fingers from (say) their left hand are touching the screen, and on some apps this causes them to cease responding to touch events from their other (right) hand.

7. If your app produces revenue through advertising, it probably shouldn't be marketed at young kids. Kids will press on the advertising and will just get frustrated when they arrive on a webpage somewhere, and adults will eventually delete the app because we don't want our kids feeling frustrated.

There might be evidence that early exposure to television, before the child's neurological development is ready to deal with it, is harmful. But I'm not aware of "an established body of evidence" proving that TV is harmful. Do you have sources? I'm very interested in seeing such sources, as I used to be under the impression that TV is harmful, but I am now convinced otherwise.

Be careful ignoring the scientific method here. You are equating a fear of bad side effects from TV with bad side effects with iPad use. Fear is not the scientific method.

There are many dimensions to consider when evaluating harm. For example, in early childhood development, the child desperately wants to imitate the adult (or role model), and will suffer certain side effects (e.g., problems with self confidence) if forbidden to imitate. Thus even if there is harm in using the iPad, there could easily be more harm in forbidding its use (but this can easily be remedied by never allowing the child to see the adult using the iPad).

I urge you to be careful about following any lines of parenting that mold the child (e.g., the child should be outside playing ball, not inside doing X). I see parents force their kids to conform with preset ideas of how a child should be, ignoring how early child development works, and thus cause pscyhological harm (e.g., internalization of fear of the parent). An analogy would be the parent teaching the child how to walk by grabbing the kid's legs and moving them in micro-adjustments; the kid will end up with poor motor control.