Yet another Hacker News

Amazon's "digital pacifier" for toddlers

49 points jumploops 4 days ago 65 comments

ArcHound 1 hour ago | parent

If you think this is a good idea, please tell my why, happy to discuss.

I have nothing else to say rn.

voidfunc 1 hour ago | parent

They're going to use a device anyways because mom or dad are going to want to avoid parenting. Might as well give them something designed for them.

dangond 1 hour ago | parent

Enabling the avoidance of parenting incentivizes parents who would otherwise be parenting to also avoid parenting. I agree with OP, hard to see how this is a good thing.

ArcHound 58 minutes ago | parent

That's no reason to design devices that enable this parent behaviour. We should move in the other direction. Shaming parents who overly rely on giving kids devices for adults can be somewhat effective.

I know there's no hard leverage.

voidfunc 56 minutes ago | parent

Most of us live in reality land.

alt227 53 minutes ago | parent

What? My kids have never ever had a screen of their own. They sit still in restaurants and flights like well parented kids have for decades. Anyone who thinks screens are required for bringing up children is ignoring countless research projects which prove otherwise, and are actively hurting their childrens development.

0c3ca83 48 minutes ago | parent

It's a such a shame that it's impossible to parent children without a screen in reality land.

vachina 40 minutes ago | parent

Reality is nobody forced you to have kids.

If you cannot raise your kids properly, please dont have kids.

tripleee 33 minutes ago | parent

Reality is that telling future bad parents not to have kids isn't going to stop them having kids, even if you say please

voidfunc 19 minutes ago | parent

When has telling people to not have kids ever resulted in said people not having kids? It's a part of our instincts and biology and really really easy to do.

We have to deal with the fact a lot of people produce kids they do not want or regret having. That's reality.

microtonal 23 minutes ago | parent

Our kid has certainly not had access to tablets/phones the first years of her life and only rarely until she was 9 or 10 or so. We have also banned phones from the dinner table, etc. from the beginning.

Parenting takes time and focus. Putting 0-6 years olds behind a tablet screen is just absolving yourself from your responsibility as a parent. Some TV time can be ok after 3 years or so, but you have to time it strictly (so that it does not become a convenience) and exclude some types of cartoons [1].

[1] https://thesciencesurvey.com/editorial/2024/07/07/the-proble...

tripleee 55 minutes ago | parent

So.. stop producing smartphones / tablets? TVs? What's your other option?

lrvick 50 minutes ago | parent

Stop marketing to them to kids or normalizing kids using them?

This is really not that hard. Modern app culture is highly addictive and provably poison for our brains over time. Adults can choose poison if they wish but when they give it to their kids it is called child abuse.

ArcHound 45 minutes ago | parent

I'm not saying go to zero. But definitely not over 3 hours and definitely not a dedicated device for them.

rpdillon 54 minutes ago | parent

> Shaming parents who overly rely on giving kids devices for adults can be somewhat effective.

I'd like to hear more about the results you've gotten with this approach. How do you approach is this with your kids?

ArcHound 45 minutes ago | parent

I don't have data, I don't run a study. Are you saying that shame is an ineffective mechanism of social cohesion?

With my kids, I oversee everything they do (they are under 6). They average 15min daily for two episodes of a kids show.

I'm not saying go to zero. But definitely not over 3 hours and definitely not a dedicated device for them.

pizza234 38 minutes ago | parent

> How do you approach is this with your kids?

Regarding my kids: high priority, wide/curated choice (not in terms of restriction, but in terms of actively finding things they may like), accompanied learning, and, crucially, starting from a very young age. It's pretty much standard parenting, that is, one gets out what one puts in.

By the time children start to pressure for this type of devices (say, 10/12), they will have learned to enjoy books and more creative activities.

alt227 16 minutes ago | parent

I am in the same boat as you, my kids have never had screens. However I do wonder that if by not teaching them to use tech sparingly at a young age, will they just fall down that hole at an older age when they are young adults?

Mobile devices and social media does not get less addictive as you get older, otherwise anybody over about 30 right now would never have any issues with it. Therefore I worry its entirely possible to bring your children up completely avoiding the downfalls of screentime, but then set them up to fall later because they havent developed the guards against it or even havent 'got it out of their system' so to speak.

veverkap 40 minutes ago | parent

My only possible counterpoint in agreement is whataboutism. Companies make lots of devices designed for "negative" behavior.

Not an excuse but an explanation perhaps?

TZubiri 36 minutes ago | parent

parents will do it anyways, so products that have child safety features are being developed

tripleee 57 minutes ago | parent

Demand for products comes from the consumer, not the producer. This trend happened a long time ago, with parents giving their kids a tablet to avoid actually parenting.

Maybe it's making the best of bad parents

layer8 56 minutes ago | parent

I thought that people don't know what they want until you show it to them? They thought they wanted faster horsies but Amazon gave them noxious cars?

tripleee 41 minutes ago | parent

The demand was for transportation, not any specific product.

Amazon's target market here, wants to parent their kids without parenting their kids. Whether that's a TV with cartoons 20 years ago, a tablet 5 years ago, or a "digital pacifier" today nothing has changed. It's just being fulfilled differently.

My point is that the responsibility is on parents, not companies who will inevitably get the blame and nothing will change. See the other commenter here who said their kids don't even own a tablet.

ArcHound 52 minutes ago | parent

Not always. AI is being pushed on plenty of people. Let's just say that not all products serve consumers and there's room for regulation.

Even if I want to buy uranium, I shouldn't. And if I want to buy a chair, I shouldn't be seeing only uranium chairs.

ctoth 48 minutes ago | parent

Amusingly, I totally bought Uranium off of Amazon ~7 years ago when I wanted to test my Geiger counter. Doesn't seem to be available anymore though? Sad!

tripleee 25 minutes ago | parent

I mean uranium can be a hazard to people around you, so I don't think that's an equivalent scenario.

Drugs could be a good analogy as it (mostly) affects yourself. A safe route for people to buy those would fix the #1 leading cause of death of young adults in the US today (fentanyl)

1shooner 43 minutes ago | parent

This is also a great argument for low-tar cigarettes for children.

tripleee 28 minutes ago | parent

Do you have a strong argument against them?

The group of parents who let their kids smoke might get those instead, improving their health

The parents who don't allow it would never consider them

I suppose it depends how many of group 2 could be converted to 1 if they were "low tar!".. my intuition is close to zero

1shooner 15 minutes ago | parent

You're asking if I have a strong argument against targeting children with tobacco products?

tripleee 1 minute ago | parent

The existence of them, yeah. I don't think it's so clear cut that it'd be a net increase in harm. Advertising I'm not so sure about, but as for the mere existence of them:

Group A is going to smoke regardless, having a healthier product reduces harm

Group B is never going to smoke

TZubiri 37 minutes ago | parent

doing devil’s advocate here, because it does look like a nightmare.

IF my kids were to have access to a tablet, I would prefer it be a tablet specifically desgined for kids, rather than a commodity all powerful generic computing device and OS

aleqs 17 minutes ago | parent

a big tech device/platform designed and algorithmically optimized to hit/increase corporate metrics with small kids as the subjects... hard to imagine anything more dystopian

maybe it'll help us raise good docile consumers and workers tho /s

AnotherGoodName 17 minutes ago | parent

A loaded question and I feel like people here including yourself are criticizing from the sidelines. Essentially the old "OMG you let your kid play on the phone!!! what a terrible parent!!!!". Although this isn't a phone, it's a device designed for kids with hopefully some apps that have a little more educational value than the typical phone apps.

The talk in this thread indicates absolutely no empathy for dual working parents and just repeats tired talking points. If anyone here looks back on their own childhood perhaps they actually had similar freedoms? Hell i used to play the Apple 2 obsessively from a very young age. I credit it as formative in a positive way.

You can argue that if you're both working and no one has 100% time to dedicate to raising the child they shouldn't have children but that argument leads to plummeting birth rates.

I say all of this as someone who doesn't have kids but I have at least some sense of how freaking hard it is and in the grand scheme of things a tablet designed for kids isn't the worst thing.

Tell me why an alternative that's at least better than a phone is so bad? If you want to argue a phone or any such device that keeps kids occupied for some time is unacceptable i think you're waaaaay out of touch.

metadat 10 minutes ago | parent

Parenting before the age of tablets and phones was a thing that seemed to work fairly well overall.

AnotherGoodName 2 minutes ago | parent

It's true and it's also true that parent's would be criticized from the sidelines for allowing kids, even from a very young age to sit in front of screens for hours on end when i was a kid.

I have a friend who didn't have a television until the age of 12. If you ask which kids turned out well adjusted and which didn't it wasn't the one's with no screen time anymore than the one's with unlimited screen time. There's some reality to life people here aren't accepting and i can't see an issue with some level of hands off parenting that this enables quite honestly.

I know people are going to attack with some extreme of "you allow your kid to be raised by a tablet" or some such but these views are all so tiresome. The reality is that majority of kids have always been allowed some form of screen time and todays screentime is going to at least be more interactive than yesterdays screentime.

alt227 5 minutes ago | parent

Did you read the article? It clearly references many research projects which show detrimental behaviour, bad temper, and poor attention spans undeniably linked to screen time.

SillyUsername 13 minutes ago | parent

This is no different to our parents generation that used to tell us to stop watching TV or get off the games console (like a Gameboy). But this is besides the point.

I feel it's great, but then I use Google Kids on the Fire, because Amazon's app is junk in comparison.

And also, my kid is (disabled) autistic and non verbal and this keeps them calm and happy.

So yes it's a great idea.

alt227 46 minutes ago | parent

IMO even parents who use digital devices to pacify their children know they are making bad choices, but just choose to anyway out of convenience. This choice mirrors a lot which adults have to make these days, and fighting convenience requires strong will and sticking to principles. This is not something which comes naturally or easily to humans unfortunately.

vorpalhex 15 minutes ago | parent

It's not as if the kids who get the digital pacifiers are well behaved.

Usually my kids are sitting quietly at the table and playing with their little cars or whatever while some kid is melting down that he ran out of roblox or his game isn't working.

I've literally seen kids that are 9 or 10 act this way in public! Like little babies!

rwyinuse 44 minutes ago | parent

Somebody should study whether giving a smart device to a toddler increases their chances of getting ADHD diagnosis and medication at later age. Probably the answer is yes.

If shitty parent's don't care about well-being of their children, they could at least consider the cost of future medication, not to even mention likely worse performance in school and job market.

jdiff 42 minutes ago | parent

From the article,

> While observing 422 children ages 3 to 5, a 2022 study led by Radesky found that mobile device use for calming — in other words, a digital pacifier — was associated with “decreased executive functioning and increased emotional reactivity.” (Executive function refers to memory and problem-solving skills needed for everyday life. Emotional reactivity refers to poor impulse control in response to stress, pain, and other negative feelings.)

ADHD is a type of executive function disorder.

seabass-labrax 18 minutes ago | parent

The study doesn't claim causation. Instead of mobile device use causing executive dysfunction, it is more probable that the correlation is because mobile device use is more effective at calming down a child with poor executive function than a child with typical executive function. That's not to say it's a good way of calming of course.

veverkap 41 minutes ago | parent

> One product design that concerned me was the handle — like it’s intended to be carried around like a briefcase

Has the extra benefit of getting them ready for the workforce. /s

archon1410 37 minutes ago | parent

The drop-proof design is good selling point even for adults. Few phones and tablets come that rugged from the factory. The long battery life/playback time too. Might see some use among adults if wasn't stuck with the $9/month subscription.

sigma5 36 minutes ago | parent

It's funny how those same billionaires who sell these devices, do not give their children devices until the age of 14.

PS to parents: give your child a toy or a book not a tablet ffs.

tintor 24 minutes ago | parent

I agree for age of 3-6 years, but until age 14 is ridiculous.

Not all devices are equally bad.

I've been happily learning to code my own video games on Intel 486 PC in QuickBasic since late elementary school (age 10), and yes, I played outdoors with other kids too.

Before I had PC of my own, I was making them on paper (game design and mechanics, not literal code).

alt227 12 minutes ago | parent

Another thing to blame on the billionaires then. Soon they will become like gods, feared and blamed for intentionally causing plagues and famines when people dont appease them enough.

micromacrofoot 16 minutes ago | parent

It's kind of gross that people think the screens for kids phenomenon is "avoid parenting" — a two working parent household has very little time for anything and it's incredibly stressful (good luck if you're a single parent).

Yeah sometimes you want your kid to not scream the whole time in the car or on a 6 hour flight where everyone will hate you. My 4 year old niece once screamed for the entirety of a 30 minute car ride because she didn't like what color socks she was wearing, you can't talk yourself out of these absurd situations sometimes and distractions help. I'd love to give a book in these situations, but half the time it just gets thrown at your head.

Why does no one say "parents need more time and space" or "parents need help making effective choices in a world that constantly demands more of them" everyone loves crawling out of the woodwork to tell you how horrible you are.

rationalist 10 minutes ago | parent

How much of screaming kids, is bad parenting? None of the kids in dual working parent, or single parent households that I grew up with, screamed.

alt227 2 minutes ago | parent

I wonder what parents did for thousands of years before screens came along.

boothby 12 minutes ago | parent

> “Kids want a real tablet, not a toy,” the Jeff Bezos-founded company said in a press release

An almost verbatim line from Toy Story. Incredible. Only the main character was quite a bit older than 3.

vcryan 2 minutes ago | parent

My kids must be losers - they still like books.