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

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

#71

Post by ttt_ »

veidr wrote: post #66
thibaut_barrere wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My son (4yo) barely watches TV (maybe one hour a week or so) but spends a good amount of time on the iPad. There's a wide range of activities on the iPad, going from plain video games to pure learning bits (letters, sounds, cooking, 3d moves etc) which makes it much more interesting than only "video games" IMO (and this generates a lot of discussions centered around learning too!). On the frequency of use: it's prett…

Well, sounds like your son is doing great, that's wonderful. :) I concede your point that the iPad can stretch/blur the notion of what a "game" is, in interesting ways. Although I am inclined to limit my kids' "screen time" (to zero, at two years old), I would never choose to limit my kids' "book time",. But perhaps my thinking about it is too coarse, since iPad apps can be hybrids of both, or combine their attribute…

I have a On a side note I don't own an iPad nor intend to. Maybe a wii (she's already pretty curious about the tv remote control). However, I'll probably hold that off and let her enjoy the real world for a while.

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

#72

Post by brudgers »

veidr wrote: post #48

I'm curious: don't any other people here think 2-year-old kids shouldn't be playing iPad games at all ? I'm convinced that watching TV is harmful to a child's intellectual development. (And there's an established body of evidence to support that.) As a kid, I hated my hippie Montessori teacher mom for allowing me only one hour of TV per week as a kid in the late 70s and early 80s (elementary school; I usually chose t…

My son watched TV when he was small - after a full day of high stimulus activities in an educational daycare program, he needed downtime. He started playing with the Xbox 360 when he was five and saved his money from odd jobs for us and neighbors and bought himself a Wii when he was 9.

Maybe he won't be the next Steve Jobs because of it.

But what has been interesting is that recently, he is much less interested in TV and video games and far more interested in physical world gaming with his peers: Bey Blades, Pokemon, Yugioh, and in particular Warhammer. He's been buying figures, paints and brushes not the latest version of Madden with his money.

Keep in mind that it was easier for your mother to do what she did than it is to do something similar today - kids programming wasn't available on 13 channels 24x365 and it was considered inappropriate to market to children in the way that is now standard [see Juliet Schor's Born to Buy: http://www.amazon.com/Born-Buy-Commercialized-Consumer-Cultu...]

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

#73

Post by luser001 »

veidr wrote: post #48

I'm curious: don't any other people here think 2-year-old kids shouldn't be playing iPad games at all ? I'm convinced that watching TV is harmful to a child's intellectual development. (And there's an established body of evidence to support that.) As a kid, I hated my hippie Montessori teacher mom for allowing me only one hour of TV per week as a kid in the late 70s and early 80s (elementary school; I usually chose t…

Spot on observations. Your mother did it right. Do the same thing for your child.

We do something similar with our 20-mo old. We're less hardcore about the TV^WNetflix thing than your mother. If he wants to watch Eeebee or Old MacDonanld he tells us and we let him (within reason).

About 4 weeks ago, he learned to play with Duplo building blocks (which we've had for several months), and he almost never asks to watch TV now. We estimate he used to watch about 6 hrs/week before.

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

#74

Post by yusefnapora »

seclorum wrote: post #31

I really, really, really wish there was some way to disable the Home button on my iPad. My 19-month old and 4-year old kids, who absolutely love to sit with me and play with the iPad, simply find it irresistible to press that button. And when we're watching a movie, its a sure-fire way to ruin the whole experience. If it were lockable so that it didn't do anything, they wouldn't press it. Come to think of it, the sli…

If you're willing/able to jailbreak your iPad, check out Incarcerapp - it lets you optionally disable the home button, multitasking, touch events, etc. It's triggered by an Activator action (by default, clicking volume up, then down). You can also customize it per app, so you could disable touch for netflix but not games, etc. It's free and works great.

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

#75

Post by thibaut_barrere »

rsl7 wrote: post #68
veidr wrote: post #48

I'm curious: don't any other people here think 2-year-old kids shouldn't be playing iPad games at all ? I'm convinced that watching TV is harmful to a child's intellectual development. (And there's an established body of evidence to support that.) As a kid, I hated my hippie Montessori teacher mom for allowing me only one hour of TV per week as a kid in the late 70s and early 80s (elementary school; I usually chose t…

2 is too young to be doing it regularly, but once in a while is fine. It's the passivity, the two-dimensionality, setting them up with a need for constant entertainment. Also, let's not pretend it's ok because it's educational. Everything is educational when you're 2. You get a better education making a salad chopping cucumber and carrots with a crinkle cutter than playing an iPad game. My kids are 11 and 8.

On salad chopping vs iPad game: why not do both?

My son prepares tiramisus, sushis etc with us, and he watched the recipes on the iPad :)

Then I definitely agree on the "constant entertainment" point: I'm doing my best to ensure he knows to "do nothing" a bit each day.

Over-stimulating is something I'm very careful about!

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

#76

Post by awj »

GeneralMaximus wrote: post #59
Resident_Geek wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm convinced that watching TV is harmful to a child's intellectual development. (And there's an established body of evidence to support that.) Is there? I dislike children being raised by television as much as the next guy, but the chapter in Freakonomics on child development says there's no correlation between children's test scores and the amount of television they watch, according to the data from ECLS ( http:/…

Are test scores the only indicators of a child's development? I know enough people who have excellent test scores but have no initiative, no confidence, no curiosity, no hunger for learning things that are not on the test, no drive and no creativity. Of course, anecdote != data, so meh. But I do have a hunch that TV and social media both breed a passive consumption habit that can be hard to detect and even harder to…

I don't think they're the only ones, or that they're particularly good ones, but they are some of the only ones that we can measure.

That said, our anecdotes at least agree. I'm with you on that hunch, too.

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

#77

Post by ajlburke »

adriand wrote: post #65

I actually had to get a refund from Apple for an in-app purchase my son made while using Talking Tom Cat (I since deleted that app and turned off in-app purchases). 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…

With my diary app Remembary, I occasionally get empty emails submitted from the app's "Support Email" button in the help popover. The "?" button, the "Support Email" button, and the popup email's "Send" button are all in the top right part of the screen, so my best guess is that it's people's children tapping repeatedly in the top right area of the iPad. Good thing I don't have anything particularly destructive up there.

So thinking "what about the children?" is a good idea when doing any kind of app layout. It's good to make sure that repeatedly tapping or clicking on one part of the screen doesn't trigger deletions or other dangerous side effects.

In my case, it's nice to get an email every so often that doesn't have any calls to action in it.

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

#78

Post by orbitingpluto »

I've worked on a children's app for Android where the client wanted advertisements moved from the main screen (where parents would see it) to the content screen (accidental clicks only from children). That change in design made the client "dead to me" especially when they next wanted me to work on another child app where the business model was:

Fooling children into initiating SMS charges against the phone.

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

#79

Post by RKearney »

mchanson wrote: post #64
ElliotH wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an advantage of the android style permission system in this case, the 'Services that Cost you Money' section could reveal this dodgy behavior quite easily.

Apple could make this much more obvious than it is. Would be a good improvement to the app store.

Are you kidding me? They make it extremely obvious.

Apps with in-app purchases have a giant message on the App Store that, upon clicking, brings you to a list of things the application has for sale.

Not to mention there's a restriction on iOS devices that allow you to turn off in-app purchases all together.

It's like blaming Comcast because your child purchased expensive pay-per-view material when you could have easily blocked the channel.

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

#80

Post by mpstx »

A plea to parents purchasing iPad Apps for children:

Stop buying apps that do stuff like this.

If you see that an app has a $99 in-app berry purchase, don't download or buy it.

If you see that an app encourages children to poke and sling animals and destroy things, don't buy it.

Do a small bit of research to see if the app was designed with your child's age in mind. Buy apps from trusted sources like http://tocaboca.com/ , http://piikeastreet.com (disclosure:that's me), http://www.duckduckmoosedesign.com/ , etc.

If you buy more of the good stuff, there will be more good stuff to buy!

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