Kids’ Apps Are Crammed With Ads
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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.
You're stopping short of telling them about what is my real reason I hate ads. I wonder if the kids ever asked you why companies are doing it?
The reason I hate ads is because it's a legitimized way of abuse, of hurting other people. I'm gonna be a father at some point, and I dread the day I have to explain to my kid that modern civilization is in this weird state, where it's "friendly" in the sense that you don't generally have to fear strangers, but it's also overrun by malicious actors trying to suck your money and happiness dry. Our civilization pays lip service to being cooperative, yet so much of it is still adversarial.
The closest I can I think of is that there are some mobile games that use their ads as bludgeons to force you to buy their "remove all ads" in-app purchase, which, if I enjoy the game, I'm usually more than happy to buy, even if I resent a little being bullied. You could possibly stretch this to meet the definition of "abuse".
I don't like ads, but it's a pretty big stretch to say that it is abuse. Are you talking about ads on the web or on television or in app in particular, or are you talking about print ads or billboards or radio ads as well?
Certainly there are services which are borderline scams (and occasionally real scams) like multi-level marketing or snake oil goop, or games that arguably are designed to trick you into spending money on in-app purchases, but the fact that those services use ads does not taint ads, any more than the fact that people that work there use pencils mean that pencils are abuse.
So, I realize this is a minority opinion, but this is close to how I feel, especially with respect to exposing my children to advertising.
Advertising is almost always an attempt to emotionally manipulate people by lying to them. There are some exceptions, like a catalog that lists objective descriptions and prices. But virtually everything else falls under that description.
Humans have the capability of reason, even though they're emotional naturally. Children, by definition, are still learning to use reason and logic and building effective habits. To expose children to a world of very smart adults trying to undermine their ability to reason or make good choices really is an act of aggression against children.
Abuse is probably too strong, but it's definitely an aggression.
I think he's talking about all of those and the "attention economy" they represent.
Keeping up to date with what's relevant is already difficult enough, it only becomes more difficult if you got ad-interests constantly trying to perform tricks to steal your attention and time.
Advertising exists to get consumers to spend their money on a product they don't need (or a particular brand of a product they do need).
The argument is that if they're inspiring you to give them your money for something you don't need (in most cases, tricking you into thinking you do need it) that's abuse.
Actually they ask "why" every time for every thing that I say :) My sons are not yet (to my eyes) sufficiently mature to really hear a thorough answer to "why". I try to make them asking "How?" instead. I'm a hacker, not a philosopher ;)
But, to relate to your answer, I'm not really trying to make them hating ads (thought I hate ads too, like you). Loving and hating things and people is up to them, I'm just giving context and knowledge (ok, sometimes it's hints on my own feelings on important subjects such as religion). That's of course a very personal pov on education.
However, I think I agree with others that ads, in general, do not quite live up to the "abuse" term. But, for kids the term may very well fit and is one of the reasons why there was so much effort put into restricting these kinds of advertising in the past. Unfortunately, though, it seems like we've just thrown our hands up in the air and given up...
I think there was a time when ads made some sense. Before the ultra-connected world being able to actually tell your potential customers that your product existed was a real problem, especially for niche products that wouldn't otherwise be mentioned in mainstream media. If you invented a new type of lightbulb and you wanted to get the word out then buying an ad was a good way to go. In French "advertisement" is called "publicity" which reflects this pretty well I think, it's about making your product publicly known. Somewhat amusingly in Portuguese the word is "propaganda".
But does it really make sense anymore? Nowadays we are overwhelmed with information. I can duckduckgo for "best lightbulb" and get pages and pages of reviews. Word of mouth is easier than ever thanks to social networks (and without having to buy "influencers" to shill your product "organically"). There's no scarcity of information anymore. If your product is good you can get all the "publicity" you need without having to buy "propaganda".
Besides for many big companies it's not even about advertising a product anymore. It's about the brand. Everybody knows about McDonalds and yet you regularly see ads that don't even try to sell you a new burger or anything, just McDonalds as a brand. They want to be a part of your consciousness, a part of your lifestyle. I think the Portuguese people got it right after all.
Now you're telling me that we're doing "a legitimized way of abuse"? Seriously? Come on. Nothing in the world is this black and white.
I even see this in my elderly parents, they will be promoting something they saw on TV usually pandering to them with a catchy jingle or emotional piano/violin background track.
Kids can not even begin to perceive this level of subliminal manipulation and that isn't going to change unless we remove it from their environment and constantly point out the background manipulation. How will you attack this problem with your kids?
Now if you're saying "Children are not old enough to do business with shrewd adults." That's very fair.
Everyone on this thread hates ads, but that's a stretch there bud.
They're going to get exposed to ads whether I like it or not, and I'd rather they learned what they are, how they work and to just deal with and ignore them. You don't build up a resistance to germs by living in an antiseptic environment your whole life, and I think it's the same with ads. We make sure our girls have plenty of physical and mental activities to enjoy. Both of them love art and use our computers and iPads for drawing, sketching and painting as well as physical media. They're both musical playing the piano and flute, and occasionally play around with Garage Band and such but visual arts is their main thing. We encourage outdoors activities, they went horse riding for years but that's died off and they've both been in the Air Cadets here in the UK for about a year. To me it's about balance and encouraging responsibility.
We're very much guiding our kids childhoods our way, the choices we make for them open some avenues but inevitably close off others. That seems to be working fine for us, but I've got no problem with your way. They're your kids and I fully understand why youre taking the approach you are. I just don't think it's the only responsible attitude.
The ads were there, but we had that power over them.
I remember being shocked about a decade ago that a group of 3rd graders had seen The Hangover(a rated R movie) without the permission of their parents. When I asked how they were able to do this without their parents knowing, they almost laughed at me.
The idea that their parents could effectively censor the content they consumed was not something they understood. There was always someone with a phone, computer, laptop, USB key, DVD, etc.
When kids are young and you(or a loved one) has eyes on them 24/7 it’s easy to control their lives, and the content they are exposed to. I’m very curious as to how parents effectively censor the world for older kids who are around other kids, without turning into the dreaded “helicopter” parent.
It seems like an overwhelming challenge.
Ever watch watch south park? Then you know who Kenny is and how dysfunctional his family is. Every kid meets a Kenny in their lifetime. They're the kid who knows where his parents porn stash is kept and by 13 is raiding their parents booze and drug stash. He's the kid whose house you go to watch R films and look at hustler magazines (I'm dating myself here). They also most likely had a hacked cable box with the playboy channel. In their bedroom.
Of course your parents told you to stay away "from that boy". But after school you tell your parents you're "going to John's house to study" but instead you and a few other friends meet up at "Kenny's" place ;-). Though, It's not all porn and bad things. It's just a great place to hang out and play ball or nintendo or whatever because no one is telling you to study or do homework. It's pure rebellious freedom and it's exciting.
You can't shield your kids forever. And the more you shield them the worse prepared they are for the harsh realities of the world. The best approach is to educate your kids of dangers and and hope for the best. Teach them about sex, drugs, alcohol, smoking, violence, abuse, behavioral issues, etc. Make sure they know what can be potentially harmful. My mother and father did a good job of that so I knew when to hang back and say "no thanks". I stayed away from drinking and drushguse my who adolescent life.
I did grow up with some smart people trying to manipulate me in between cartoon breaks. (Personally I tended not to watch the most exploitative "cartoons that are just ads for toys" sorts myself, but YMMV. It wasn't my own brilliance, though, just my personal taste.) But it was very amorphous and poorly targeted at me personally. There's no AI chewing over my video preferences and figuring out what I'm most vulnerable to. It made for much better practice in becoming a bit cynical about such things. I also grew up in a world of video games, but again, the feedback loop was too big and amorphous to manipulate me very effectively. It was still potentially addicting, no question, but much, much less so than a modern mobile gacha game or something.
I'm taking a staggered approach myself. I know they have to learn themselves. I'm literally budgeting for them to buy a few things of their own free will, and then be disappointed in the result. It's part of life, and like many things, better experienced young while it still doesn't really matter. But I'm also moderating the rate at which this stuff comes in to them, because I'm not even particularly convinced it was a fair fight in the 1980s when I grew up, and it's not even close today.
Not OP, but in my opinion it should be pretty easy to control undesirable content. Nobody likes ads; I see no reason for the kids to actively seek out ads once they know what ads really are.
As far as controlling "desirable" content like movies, games, etc, I'm not sure it should be, but that's a rant for another day!
Right, adults who are fully aware of the purpose of advertising don't, e.g., actively look forward to Superbowl half-time ads.
The reason for my gray hairs is that the kids are always ready for the next level of freedom before I am :) Whether it’s the taller swing set, climbing that tree, etc.
It’s a fine line between helicoptering and protecting. And the line is always shifting. My two year old isn’t ready to climb a tree on her own; but soon, she’ll be able to.
So, you can’t protect forever — nor should you. But you can continually stretch their personal responsibility and prepare for what’s coming up on the horizon.
If you don't let kids above the age of 6 play on their own with no adult supervision, then you're already a helicopter parent. You might be a milder version of it, but you'll produce some of the same dependence.
At the age of 7 go to school on their own and come back home on their own. They often play unsupervised and walk around town on their own. You cannot stop kids from being exposed to content you disapprove of without being a helicopter parent.
I also don’t believe the viewing was done in school, but the kids were classmates who met in school.
I am with you.
I think advertisers —and the people implementing their work— are a net bad, at all ages. They are actively and openly trying to force influence on people to get them to spend money. Why would you want that for yourself, let alone your kids?
"But they'll never learn!" - the hell they wont. You don't need to cut your leg off to know it'll hurt. Talking about this stuff, as you have, is the perfect way to expose them to what's actually going on. The unfettered "Let them learn their own way" nonsense doesn't do it justice.
"My kids are fine!" is an anecdote, not an argument. How about one of the dozens of reviews of the impacts of junk food advertising on diet, spurring record rates of childhood obesity? https://www.apa.org/topics/kids-media/food.aspx
I don't get it. Your right to hold your own opinion is an important thing. Letting people (and now AI) openly influence you is a stupid decision. Letting them do the same to your children is much worse.
And what I originally came here to say was that I applaud you getting your kids on real computers. The education system —in general— has given up on educating computing because "kids know how to use everything". 20 years ago, we were taught how to use office productivity apps (eg MS Office), mostly worked into other lessons as part of the (eg) data collection (eg Bio, Geography).
Ask today's school leavers to make you a pivot table.
Edit: The only place I might deviate from you is internet access. I've got a few years before self-learning is a thing for my children, but when they're ready, I'll be more than happy to give them access to Wikipedia and other sanitised (read: ad free, "people aren't the product") learning resources.
Because you want to learn about new products in some way, don't you? You also want companies to create new products, don't you? Advertisement is a necessary part in both of these. Few things spread fast enough with word of mouth alone.
>"My kids are fine!" is an anecdote, not an argument. How about one of the dozens of reviews of the impacts of junk food advertising on diet, spurring record rates of childhood obesity? https://www.apa.org/topics/kids-media/food.aspx
The article does not claim that it's a causal link. They quite clearly say that it's a correlation. The causal link could even be the other way around.
>Letting people (and now AI) openly influence you is a stupid decision. Letting them do the same to your children is much worse.
How do you propose that you or your kids learn knowledge? That's letting other people influence you.
My guess is that your kids will pick up these "negative influences" anyway, but they will never tell you.
Since when is somebody shouting about their random product the only way I can learn things? Active discovery is still a thing.
Make something, make details available. If people need it, they will find it and buy it.
> You also want companies to create new products, don't you?
No, I want better products that I actually need, not more, or just newer.
> They quite clearly say that it's a correlation. The causal link could even be the other way around.
We're reading different things if that was your takeaway. You sound like an asbestos salesman in the 50s.
You seem to hold your own mind in pretty low disregard, needing to be spoon fed to discover. You can be more than an idle consumer.
I believe you're teaching your children to be children instead of teaching them to be people. You're creating an advertisement free bubble for them to live in - once they're living on their own, they'll lack experience dealing with exposure to advertisement.
You see benefit in the teaching opportunities in the times your kids are exposed. I'd argue you would have more teaching opportunities if they were exposed more often. The sooner they see it's a part of every day life, the sooner they'll be equipped to handle it on their own.
That said, maybe this is hypocritical. I stop my daughter from doing things I know will harm her (using knives, seeing scary things), maybe I'm just not being cautious enough about what I shield her from.
I'd rather my kids find ads jarring when they are exposed en masse to them rather than be too comfortable around them.
There are a lot of things that 5 and 7 year olds shouldn't be exposed to yet, not just ads.
This isn't how it works. If a kid sees ads repeatedly then it initially increases their preference for them, but later lowers that preference again. Overabundance of ads will desensitize kids to them and will make them less interested in them. You shielding your kids from ads will likely make them more affected by ads when they get a glimpse of them here and there.
Ads that affect you subconsciously are not the type you see on TV or on a poster. The subconscious effects of ads come from things like your kid repeatedly seeing you using tide pods to wash their clothes.
Good point. I guess helpings kids to learn to think objectively in general is the key to helping them think objectively about the things we shield them from when they're young.
They're not really in a bubble: they're exposed to ads outside of home (TV at other places, Cinema, street boards, on city buses...).
I hope that this clear separation between "no ads/home" and "ads/outside" is sufficient to cross a threshold in their mind which makes them thinks "Ads are not meant to be ubiquitous".
And when I notice that this threshold is being crossed, then I'm here to tell them "looks, choosing if we're exposed to ads in on us!".
And I hope that this low-age learning will help them later in life (more or less >12/15, imo).
This helps me understand. You've convinced me of your approach - thank you. :)
I'd rather my kids be reading than sitting thru ads.
I Googled for "fortnite addiction" and was shocked how many similar stories there are. It is an epidemy. Game shops are exploiting advanced psychological tactics to turn young generation into addicts.
I am thinking more and more that this should be regulated. There should be a set of rules that a game shouldn't break. For example, prohibiting sales of items, or putting a cap on that. No gambling. A user should be able to pause a game without being punished. And so on... Isn't there a way at all? I understand this is stepping on personal liberties, but it hurts to know dudes in Epic Games are stuffing their wallets while young kids are breaking their banks to buy virtual pistols and don't have ways to exit that world without taking a hit. Especially since playgrounds are empty and streets are not playgrounds anymore.
I blame myself.
>A user should be able to pause a game without being punished.
Good luck pausing multiplayer games.
>Isn't there a way at all? I understand this is stepping on personal liberties, but it hurts to know dudes in Epic Games are stuffing their wallets while young kids are breaking their banks to buy virtual pistols and don't have ways to exit that world without taking a hit.
He's your kid. You're the one that's letting him make those transactions. He doesn't earn money on his own and most methods of payment require parental approval.
>I blame myself.
It is your fault, but chances are pretty good that he'll simply get over it one day. As long as he keeps his grades up and behaves normally you probably shouldn't be too worried about it. On the other hand, if it is an epidemic as you claimed above then your kid will simply be the norm and not an outlier.
This is a narrative the game industry has been successfully pushing through organized PR campaigns and astroturfing online discussions, of course parents share some responsibility but this angle is disingenuous and lets publishers off the hook too easily. I wouldn't beat yourself up too much here you're aware of the situation and actively involved in fixing it.
> Game shops are exploiting advanced psychological tactics to turn young generation into addicts.
This + the instantly available secondary market which allows you to gamble with your digital goods/currency is the major difference between this and it's predecessor: baseball/pokemon/magic the gathering card packs.
Belgium/EU are making strong moves on this but very doubtful we'll see any movement in the US anytime soon, a New Hampshire senator dared to question the situation and was blasted by an aggressive letter from the ESRB claiming loot boxes are not at all gambling.
The games industry is uniquely positioned to allow for this kind of abuse because the primary targets (marks) are unorganized young children that don't know any better. Most games are just a vessel for the 'marketplace' which is an online casino for kids. The current state of gaming is shocking, regulation is desperately needed.
It is almost entirely the parents' fault. Parents are the ones that have to raise their children, especially when the parents are letting the kid play a game that's meant for somebody 4+ years older.
>This + the instantly available secondary market which allows you to gamble with your digital goods/currency is the major difference between this and it's predecessor: baseball/pokemon/magic the gathering card packs.
But those exact same things happened with those games too. The reason those card games weren't so popular was that they weren't as fun and they were prohibitively expensive.
>Belgium/EU are making strong moves on this but very doubtful we'll see any movement in the US anytime soon, a New Hampshire senator dared to question the situation and was blasted by an aggressive letter from the ESRB claiming loot boxes are not at all gambling.
The EU might agree, but that's because the EU makes all kinds of decisions to curb the freedom of its citizens. I say this as a European. And the reason why the ESRB told that senator that lootboxes are not gambling is because they do not fall under the legal definition of gambling.
>Most games are just a vessel for the 'marketplace' which is an online casino for kids. The current state of gaming is shocking, regulation is desperately needed.
I find it ironic that you're asking for regulation on a topic you seem to be completely ignorant of. Most games do not even have a marketplace. What's shocking about gaming is the amount of misinformation floating around. I guess this is our generation's "video games cause violence."
Perhaps induce degraded connection for Fortnite in particular, via some router-level hacks? Just an idea, but it could be catastrophic if your son figures out. Hopefully he would be mature enough by then to understand.
The question is whether they are happy with their choices.
The 3 year old knows how to start his own netbook which has ArchLinux with KDE on it, and he knows how to start the potato-guy game. And he learned to use the touchpad, which is nice. Thats all he does computing wise, the smartphone is not trustworthy (despite being LineageOS with no google on it, the Android interface is just too convulsed) to be exposed to toddler yet. The TV is used to watch educational shows like songs of letters and numbers, through kodi, the TV cant even tune in to normal TV channels, only content I placed on Kodi for him to find if he ever learns to use its remote.
So far this 3 year old speaks like a 5 year old, understands 3 languages, and can read 3-4 letter words, has friends and creative mind when drawing stuff.
And they only got kodi.
On my side, I was also very proud, because he was almost seven when it happened !
We managed to « force » them using their toys or play outside instead of spending worthless time in front of a screen. I like to think (hope ?) it’s the right thing to do.
Pretty much every parent says something like this about their child
Are you also vegan? ;)
The game content is basically all branded characters.
What you should provide is an open ear. Listen to the experiences of your child, explain things regarding why things are the way they are and provide guidelines, how to act responsibly.
The most important thing in my opinion is, that you as a parent should stay involved and always be open for dialog. And have faith in your child to make sensible decisions.
You can. Click on the timestamp of that comment, and the "favourite" link will be there.
I've noticed the same things as you when my kids watch ads at the grandparent's. Their reactions show advertising to children for exactly what it is - taking advantage of young minds that cannot defend themselves.
We have a smart TV that has it's network access controlled by my router that limits their screen time. My daughter has a clam shell phone to call us in case of emergency but neither child will never have a smart phone as long as they're in my house.
I've plainly told the wife's family do not buy my kids any more technology without asking us first because it will end up in the garbage. I don't accept the opinion that these technologies are benign, especially from people like my wife's family who have never actually given the subject any serious or considered thought.
Before the kids came the plan was a low tech kids home, reality then smacked us in the face and we compromised.
Kids have their own Amazon Fire Kids Unlimited tablets. Which is fairly locked down to their age groups and with no internet and only 30 minutes of app & videos allowed on school days, though unlimited books. The weekends are more generous. (I do love parents.amazon.com)
Also added Netflix and BBC Iplayer Kids apps, and they watch BBC's CBeebies channel on the lounge TV occasionally. So normally they never see any ads.
But sometimes shit has hit the fan, and they have to be up late watching a commercial kids channel on TV or borrow my phone to play games then they are exposed to ads.
I then try to explain to them that ads are not necessarily true. They are trying to sell you something that you might not need or is as good as it pretends to be. Don't think that has sunk in yet.
But they seem relatively shielded for now. But they have not got their own phones yet. I dread that day.
That doesn't stop blatant adver-games showing up (I'm looking at you, Ever After High), but even there, the advertising is the same sort of environment advertising that we saw 30 years ago in GI Joe and He-Man. That's not new.
I'd want to get in first to teach responsible internet use (of course with a good ad blocker and whitelisting of domains). There's some really good educational stuff out there on YouTube and elsewhere. I think I would have loved to have watched a channel like Clickspring when I was younger.
My personal stake on this is: they're just barely starting to learn how to count, read and write. It's way too much early to have them seat before a whiteboard and hearing me speaking and drawing schemas about TCP/IP, subnets masks, transport and routing protocols, HTTP, HTML/JS hosting and delivery and finally what's going on in that blackbox that we call "a browser".
This is what it means to be computer literate, not snapchat experience, which will be another myspace in five years.
Our family has a TV on wheels that gets put in the closet and brought out primarily on weekends. Just an Apple TV with a few ad-free channels. When my 7 yo comes home from school and discovers the TV has been put away, he just goes and plays with his legos!
My phone has no games, but it has lots of apps for making music, and the kids are in to that (See Figure from Propellerhead/Allihoopa).
Probably Wikipedia? You can download a copy of it in your preferred language.
I've been thinking about doing so, and would be interested if anyone has a favorite viewer.
To be very, very clear, I'm not anti-Wikipedia, I just think a "real" encyclopedia would be much better.
Britannica stills sells DVD's that can be used offline.
That's a cute little touch.
Sad that the Play Store does not have a curated kids' section with pay-once, ad free and in-app purchase free apps (on the other hand, I can regard this as a concession to the fact that it's ultimately my responsibility as a parent to vet apps).
I'm having an ethically generous day ...
My 10 y.o. has a tablet, with internet access, and even Youtube enabled. But:
* Youtube is paid (no ads);
* All apps are either free without ads, or paid and thus without ads.
* No network-played games, no addictive (bejeweled-style) games. I curate the apps that get installed.
* There's a Linux PC with a browser (ad-blocked), and a bunch of drawing and educational programs; it also serves as a "TV" for stuff stored on local NAS. She started to draw using a desktop computer when she was 5.5; by now, she can read and type in two languages, and nobody systematically taught her typing.
This opens up a lot of great educational content, and filters out most of the silly or addictive content.
Oh and of course always be present and watch with the kids. Even the handpicked stuff on youtube is weird at times... or just not weird but spanish and the small ones are brabbling nonsense for the next hours.
Muchos respectos to your approach
On another note, by age 7 you would expect them to be able to launch Age of Empires on their own though.
Tip: if you want to remove ads/filter internet, it's easy to do on android: install a VPN firewall app and block everything. no more ads.
A criticism however: I think you are letting your nostalgia for the games of your youth impact your decision making here.
What makes 80's/90's games inherently better than the modern options of today? I would actually postulate that they are all equally bad for youths. If you work hard enough, you can find enough edutainment options for kids to satisfy their "screen time" entertainment needs, though I admit it is a lot of work curating content.
It seems like a tricky issue for people without the requisite know-how (and most of all, time), though. I worry that in the future, there might be a measurable decline in attention span and cognitive ability among children from poorer households, whose parents, through demands from long hours, lack of education, and lack of access to premium ad-free services, were unable to provide them with such an environment where they are protected from bombardment from technology. What kind of ready-made, low-information consumer level solutions would you consider important to expand here?
TL;DR: Don't let your kids play free games or consume free content. There's always a catch.
My boys are loving Bomberman so much!
I saw so many scary behaviors appearing that simply do not happen with Nintendo games.
Eventually he had a few of these going that had timed item releases that if he didn't get to his ipad for every single one of them, it became very upsetting to the point of almost debilitating.
None of this stuff had ever happened with any previous games on the Nintendo consoles we have. We never saw anything like it when he'd watch kid shows on Netflix or family movies.
We ended up taking the iPad away completely one day when he accidentally did something around the house that really hurt his mom...and his only concern was when he could get back on the games. At that point...we were done.
iPad/iPhone games have been entirely gone ever since and after a couple of days when I explained to him what those games were doing to him, he seemed to get it and doesn't even want to play them anymore.
He plays Wii with his sister or friends, watches TV or movies periodically but it's all at a level I would call healthly. There's no addictive behavior to it and if he can't play, he just can't play. It's not a big deal and he finds something else to do. He doesn't choose anything else over family or time with friends.
But every one of those iDevice games seem engineered to get that type of behavior. I'm now extremely wary of any "free" games that are out there, which has been difficult because I've been keeping him away from Fortnite all summer. A lot of the parent stories that I've heard / read from it have made me feel a lot better about the decision though.
At this point, "free" video games connected to the internet are a hard pass at my house.
tick tock OP
Either we're not from the same continent/culture (I'm french), or you're completely disconnected from what a 5/7 yo child is doing nowadays.
The ultimate toy in my oldest's school currently is glass balls. Buy him a hand of new colorful glass balls and he'll be the king of the school for the day.
Tablets games? PS4? Fb/youtube? Smartphones? Yes, maybe in 5 years, if even. Right now the oldest's dearest aspiration is to someday be able to go to school alone. And the young one?
At 5yo he's barely a child, what he's looking after is his parents' attention, getting cuddled, and laughing as much as possible.
My sons' friends are just the same.
> tick tock OP
What's your point anyway? Of course they're going to grow, the grow a little bit every day in fact. Actually, I'm not sure you're a parent.
The apps I choose are usually paid apps that do not have ads in them.
The only other technology I allow is a one on one session programming games in Scratch 3.
What I can’t stand, when it comes to kids, is when I have to become an expert at X to be able to trust that something is a safe environment for a child. I have to actually check the game, play it, figure out its incentive protocol and then buy the ads away. Some games sell the ads away but still have incentives to purposefully sell your time watching a video to get more points / currency.
Here is what I want. I want a way to trial a game without ads. If I like the game I’ll buy it for $1-$20 just like I would in a physical store. Then it’s my game no ads or weird economic models. If the game maker “needs” recurring money to provide the game play then eat me signup for a subscription like I would on Netflix. I want a straightforward way to own the game or at least use it like I own it (SaaS like)
Angry Birds was a really nice game, and I'd love to let my kids play it, but it just isn't playable any more. It's so full of crap. Ads, in-app-purchases, loads of shit. I'd easily pay 10€ to get back the original version of Angry Birds that I bought in 2010 or so, but that version is gone for good.
There are some games that aren't full of crap. Monument Valley, Alto's Adventure, Pinout, Blyss, Canabalt, Glider, Paw Patrol, Duplo Trains are some ad-free games that I can recommend.
I'd love to have some kind of curated list of ad-free games. The games that Apple promotes / features in the store are usually less obnoxious, but I'm not sure if there's a way to search for them.
Since Apple has removed the affiliate payments for apps, I don't think there's an easily monetisable way to build a recommendation website for ad-free games, but it may be possible to build it as a volunteer effort?
Not just phone apps, but other applications too. Upgrades are actually hostile to the end user. There's nothing to counter the incentives of companies to keep sneaking in more ways to squeeze money out of their users.
Interestingly thinking back, I remember when I first discovered Chrome's aggressive autoupdate and I felt disquieted. Now I have a better sense that it's fundamentally not to the benefit of the end user. Actually there's some benefits for web developers, which tricks them into becoming part of this culture, and heavily pushing for these newer browsers with their built-in autoupdates now.
The versions of Angry Birds there are ad-free and in-app-purchase-free.
It’s not great, but you could look for Apple Design Award winners, which are usually ad-free.
You can still find old APKs of it on the internet. I had to use one because the updated game has become unplayably slow on my 2015ish phone.
IMHO it was a really bad game.
However, to me again, it was a really nice piece of addicting software.
Honestly, it’s rendered our tablet obsolete. On occasions where we try to sit together to find something new for them to play, we all end up giving up because I refuse to let them install what seems to amount to spyware disguised as kids content.
Top tip: Whenever I do let them on devices, I put them into airplane mode. Also, my kids are happy struggling away at The Witness, so that’s kinda a win.
Just look at the "fee-to-pay" models employed by many AAA games these days. Game publishers have decided that SaaS-style ongoing revenue is the way to make money, and they will employ such at every turn. Every game has to be a "live service" now, with a bunch of gambling mechanics crammed in to make money on top of the purchase price.
For web browsing you can then have a desktop hooked up to a monitor in your living room. You can buy small simple systems that connect to the VESA mount on the back of a monitor.
Its unfortunate that mobile gaming is as it is, but its really up to the platform holders to manage. I think the problem is also that smartphones really don't have a lot of RAM, storage space, or battery life, so any entertainment they provide needs to be in short, high-impact chunks. This encourages the story-lite puzzle games which are precision engineered to be as psychologically manipulative and cash extractive as possible.
Like others here have already stated, I'm happy to pay for apps. One-off purchase, subscriptions, whatever. I used exclusively Android since the first device (T-Mobile G1) and finally switched to iOS earlier this year, and this has been the biggest obstacle so far. I'd like to install more apps but my phone is pretty much stock since I have no way of knowing whether apps are full of ads.
I am more than a little sceptical of Tim Cook's fiery "data industrial complex" speech last week as he's still not yet ready to take that first baby step and begin warning privacy-conscious users about adware. How do you overlook this as CEO? The other security features on iOS are first-rate, why deliberately overlook adware? I don't get it.
What you want sounds a lot more like a normal game console.
Truly becoming special by just staying normal.
In my book, the fact that Google allows clickable ads in toddler games makes them complicit in ad fraud. And hey, why wouldn't they? It's not like it's "real fraud" right? Right?
(I'm not entirely kidding, I don't understand why other forms of fraud are punishable with prison time but ad fraud is totally a-ok)
They're selling the ad space per impression, so more impressions equals more money...until the people buying it figure out their ads are ineffective.
It makes me wonder how someone in the advertising department for these companies hasn't seen their 3-year-old trapped in a cycle clicking on Momma's ad and burning through budget causing some reevaluation of priorities.
Where is all this dumb advertising money coming from?
It's very simple: no actual fraud in a legal sense has been committed. The person clicking the ad certainly hasn't signed any contract with the ad publisher, so how could they possibly be committing fraud by clicking the ad? The creator of the application showing the ads does not sign a contract guaranteeing to the advertiser that every click is legitimate (how could they possibly enforce, or even measure that), so it's not fraud on their part either.
Measuring and enforcing click fraud is probably the single biggest technical challenge involved in being an ad publisher.
EDIT: For example, Google AdMob: https://support.google.com/admob/answer/48182
There's no difference between having scripts, robots, or toddlers generate fake clicks.
Thanks for the tip! Didn't know about common sense media and it's exactly what I was looking for!
In the UK you can report many of those ads to the regulator who can take action.
I remember an abundance of educational programs back in the pre-Internet days. Simple Alphabet/Number matching games, click-to-colour-in games, shape identification games, etc. Most came on disks on magazines, or given away free at meetups and events. I expected educational stuff to explode with the internet and smart phones, but instead.. ugh.
We really do need a new category in both app stores. Software for kids that you buy, and then that's it. No ads, no in-app purchases, no trickery or bullshit. It should be curated by an educator and have strict rules. They make more than enough off the app store profits to cover an educator who finds, tests, and adds apps each day to this category and slowly fill it with quality educational apps we can trust with our kids.
They won't though, because they don't actually care. The more they can train kids to be ok with ads and IAP the more profit they'll make later. It's a form of brainwashing.
"full of ads, dark UX patterns, in-app purchases"
Plus notification spam, siloing your data away from you, weird/illegal financialization schemes, and selling your data.
That's really all there is out there anymore; its not exclusively a kids gaming app problem.
People don't want to pay though, I understand that you want to pay and I want to pay but you have to realize you and me are absolutely the minority.
Fixed that for you...
It should be, but iOS sometimes requires code upgrades which makes me wonder how long a person supports a version of a program on iOS. The whole length of support versus new version is problematic. I would assume version fixes for a number of years. Should be ok for an educational program since the useful lifetime is limited by the nature of the lesson.
Wait, I'm confused here. Are you (hypothetically, yes) selling something or giving away just half of it hoping that you can eventually sell the other half?
Yea but I can't search for apps without ads or in-app purchase, can I scumbags? I have to scroll through the algorithmically sorted list and click into each app page because you are evil people that sold your souls for that six figure salary and free cafeteria food.
I don’t accept anything with “in-app purchases”, and even struggle now to find the “Pay once and own” category - though I so don’t use my devices in ways this impacts me. I’m sure there’s apps that deliver this experience (in app purchases) in what I believe is an ethical manner - and it sucks to rule them all out because of a bad bunch.
I don’t have constructive feedback on how to improve this, either. My experience in this whole space has resulted in my rather locked down environment. And I’m extremely happy with it.
I’m also happy to provide further information to others, should they wish to deliver what I believe is a safer environment for myself and my family.
BUT... then there are those apps that promise to remove the ads for $1.99 or whatever, but still have an ads-for-loot scheme. That's infuriating.
https://play.google.com/about/spam-min-functionality/spam/re...
Too many people were playing vertical spam games to flood competitors off search result pages, so now instead of WTF levels 1-10 and WTF levels 11-20 or WTF free (with ads) and WTF paid (no ads) we have to have everything in one big complicated app presumably with IAP.
Deep in the IAP fine print Google does state "Developers must not mislead users about the apps they are selling nor about any in-app services, goods, content, or functionality offered for purchase." so if you bother to report the fraud, Google will possibly react.
How do you expect the apps to make money if they can't show you ads or charge you money? Selling your data?
I think you're painting phone/tablet usage in a very negative light here, as if parents are only using them as a pacifier to occupy their kids so they can have some quiet time of their own. Sure some people do that, but that's the least charitable interpretation I think.
Don't think I live in a bubble on that front, but perhaps there are researches on this that can prove me wrong.
In any case, crayons and tablets are not mutually exclusive choices. You can in fact use both, and other things as well.
Crayons for instance don’t help kids test their knowledge of letters or numbers or full words, and I’m not sure Lego brings that much over Minecraft for instance.
I visited my grand parents and they have an attic of single purpose toys. We live in a 5x smaller home yet get the kid to play with a lot of different mechanics and check things.
It’s just a lot more difficult to set bounds, but I am not sure it’s really worse. Kids 20 years ago would steal matches and perhaps accidentaly burn the house, our kids will take sneaky looks at passwords and perhaps buy dozen of toys on amazon.
Anedote but I don't allow any tablet– or phone–play, yet my daughter is more than able to test her knowledge of numbers and full words. She can write out words and get to practice hand-writing at the same time. When it comes to numbers and words, she is at least on par with others her age if not ahead (disclaimer: proud dad).
Crayons and paper bring one advantage over apps: a creative boredom, where, having completed something somewhat structured, she gets to pause and them come up with a playful approach to trying to spell new words, trying to draw new things, all in an unstructured way. We set the framwork but it's a lot looser and she gets to play within it, recombining ideas in different ways.
When she visits relatives that have tablet games, it's amazing to see how her mind just goes blank in front of them and then for the rest of the day the creative vibe seems to be gone.
People used to say the same thing to me on my PlayStation 1. Relax, technology is a part of our lifes.
Not saying kids should do it, but screens being unhealthy to the eyes is not one of them, it's a social problem.
What the hell?
You don't get few quiet hours of work with tablet. You might get peaceful car ride or waiting for doctor etc.
Both of are kids are allowed to play the tablets. We didn't plan on it, but we've spent the last two and a half years sleeping badly because my daughter (who is almost three) is a nightmare at bedtime and sleeps badly. By the time it's weekend you're in a half comatose state. Letting them play iPad lets one of the parents catch up on sleep on each of the weekend days.
I also bought my son a Switch because I hate YouTube and f2p games; he has finished Super Mario and is now playing more complex games (Mario Rabbits, Minecraft, Zelda) and is very good at them.
I'm also addicted to a p2w mobile game; at first I used it to stay awake whilst feeding my daughter, but it eventually became a coping mechanism for the pain caused by the insomnia.
When my daughter gets past this phase (I pray that it's just a phase) then I want us to go screenless.
When your toddler looks back at you to check that they're okay, to see if they're still safe, you'd better meet their gaze. Look up from your phones and watch, else your toddler will stop looking back.
I'm a medical student on psychiatry rotation, and this stuff scares me big time.
Interaction is good for children, and it's not the same as helicoptering. It's far better for a kid to talk to their parent than for the kid to play Angry Birds on the iPad while their parent sits on Facebook. I'm not suggesting a bit of parental phone time is going to mess your kids up for life, but I won't be surprised if the era of personal screens for everybody produces some fun personality traits now and then.
I play a few carefully selected Steam titles with the boys in a limited fashion, because they are actually games, and not clever schemes to monetize everything.
Even so, my oldest (who's 6) hasn't even ever seen Fortnight - and yet he still asks me about it. (I guess he hears about it from friends.) That's how good their marketing and monetization strategy works... It's sickening.
The best thing apple could do would be to randomize the list of which apps are shown when the user just searches, perhaps even weighted by reviews.
You're not weird.
And else just make them watch finger family videos for hours.
There are a few interesting channels, but otherwise I may as well be watching regular tv. The suggestions I get are also incredibly bad.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/grownups/article-cbeebies-app...
My 4yo is allowed to use an iPad but it only has the BBC apps on it. No YouTube, Sky, or any other ad supported apps. The BBC has made it possible for us to give her something and not need us to moderate what she is downloading or playing (although we do limit time on it strongly).
* graph.facebook.com
* analytics.localytics.com
* api.branch.io (analytics & ads)
* app-measurement.com (analytics, maybe ads too?)
* ssl.google-analytics.com
* settings.crashlytics.com (perhaps benign)
So right off the bat Facebook and Google are both siphoning off data from the use of this app among other 3rd parties. Did you know that?
It's such a bless for parents.
It sucks though in some ways as there are some great mobile games but they are ruined with adverts often with no way to remove them. Some games have an ad-free version for a few quid but most don't. Clearly they can make much more spamming ads every other death than they can with a one off payment of a £3-5.
The complaints are the same every time this issue comes up: "I wish I could pay to turn off the ads."
This isn't going to happen. Take control of your computer and get rid of the ads yourself.
Even more broadly, the same gap was found between high-income families and low-income families. Poorer children spend ~2.5 more hours in front of a screen per day than rich children[2].
I am seriously concerned about this emerging "digital divide", which is ironically an inversion of what everyone expected. What does it say about the kind of things we are building, when the people who work closest with tech are most afraid of it, and take the greatest lengths to keep it away from their kids?
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/style/phones-children-sil... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/style/digital-divide-scre...
What I didn't expect was the slump in sales we make from ad removal offerings. We make more money from the ads than from purchases of ad removal. I see a lot of folks say "I'll pay for a no ads experience" but the reality is most folks will continue to use the app with the ads even when the option to remove them exists.
Adding code to handle ad removal is another feature which takes time to develop and keep up to date as APIs and system versions change. Sadly, it may not be lucrative enough for most developers to put that effort in to provide the option.
Yes, you’ll make more money doing the bad thing which people are complaining about. This will always be true. If you could make more money the other way, you would do it, and people would have nothing to complain about. Therefore, the fact that you can make more money is not a valid reason to keep doing it.
If you are targeting kids and serving up ads by default, you are NOT "doing right by your customers". It might be a wide-spread practice, but it doesn't make it any less unethical. Saying as a parent.
Having an in-game store, IAP and ads are an absolute no-go for kids under 7. I’ll delete it right off the bat.
Thankfully she never saw them (she doesn't' use or even know what "Silk" is) but I was forced to randomly uninstall games until I found the culprit. I would shame them here but I forgot which game it was.
We also have a Chromebook, with a game rated "10 and up" - this game also loads adult ads - no nudity but plenty suggestive. I complained via Twitter - crickets.
Kids are not so used to ads, they instinctively hunt for the "X" button whenever anything (ad or not) overlays on top of their content.
At least WRT google play app store, they can be brutal toward apps with ads with wrong content criteria, see the link discussing your situation
https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/ads/inappropr...
with a side dish of
https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/ads/interferi...
Presumably whatever the amazon devices use for an app store (google play, I donno) has similar draconian policies to enforce IF the problem is ever reported.
Unfortunately I've had to set up ads from the developer side and the Google UI is not bad, but nothing's perfect, so in a world of a million apps its entirely possible the dev accidentally screwed up age criteria rather than was willfully antagonistic; but if parents don't report the problem to the dev or appstore there is little hope of improvement either way.
If you can get the attention of Google's automated AI eye of sauron in policy enforcement, I assure you they are remorseless, draconian, and merciless. The difficult part is getting their attention.
My kids have learned from youtube how to side load cracked and modified apps such as minecraft on their devices downloaded from mysterious and unsavory websites, which promptly messes everything on the system up, such that its possible the app dev and Google have nothing to do with your situation.
Often bring this up when I see people angry over how much their child spent in a random freemium app and the anger and vitriol they spew back at you is nuts, because they want their kids entertained for free with no catch.
High quality entertainment exists for kids out there, Nintendo Switch, Toca Boca tablet apps, etc. But yeah it actually costs dollars.
However, Google still finds a way to show me and my kids ads.
This is the problem. Even when I'm willing to (and do) pay to remove ads, the addiction and greed shown by content creators and delivery services is too powerful. They always find exceptions.
The trick is my son spends a lot of time on all kind of outside activities. Like playing with friends, language courses, math courses. When at home, I purposely try to find activities outside tech - like just chatting, lego before, currently doing random house projects. Also he is wikipedia expert - name a unknown topic and he is on wikipedia reading about it.
At the end he has like 2,3 hours free a day. He can do whatever he want - mainly playing games with his friends, when he is not installing all kinds of software he finds on internet.
So to sum it up - nothing is forbidden, time on devices looks healthy to me. I see some of his friends spending quite a lot time online though.
As for the ads, this streamer was advertising a stupid PC mouse. We bought it knowing it will be a disaster. His monthly budget was spend on it, it sucked and now he knows firsthand about the ads and as a bonus - he doubts the streamer and online content in general.
It seems like a matter of time until app stores get regulated in the same way.
Anyone know if the BBC et.al. have any good kids games?
This, paradoxically, have had a great influence on our lives - no more playing games.
When we fly I replicate some of it to the iPad and take it along.
Nothing is safe.
From my experience most of the big name kids app developers do not put ads in their apps (almost never on iOS), although I can understand why developers do.
Whether you like it or not, they work. There are two things that are always going to be true about this - kids are going to download lots of free apps (because it is easier than asking parents to pay), and they are going to accidentally tap on ads. The developer doesn't care if the user will actually purchase the product being advertised, all they care about is the click. That's just the way PPC advertising incentivizes developers. The only way around this is strictly limiting advertising for games targeting children. That has to come from the App Store moderators (Google, Apple, etc).
That way you can also get rid of the hundreds of companies eager to know what you did on the internet.
I have a hosts file that consists of 15000+ lines of blocked domains, accreddited to the inability of wildcards of Windows.
And Amazon is also a big offender. They have ad popups even on their kids interface.
The only way to counter this is to go offline after you downloaded the game, but still there are some which wouldn't even start without an internet connection.
In Google's and Amazon's place I would uphold the app creators to certain standards when it comes to kids games and apps. Like not putting ads in their apps, or if even if I allow it, then forcing them to make it easily closable and not making them with 10x10 pixel big X marks.
In the end all the games out there on the app store are either complete rubbish, or just money grabbing schemes. There are rare exceptions, but good luck finding them.
The willingness of people to open their wallet and vote with their wallet is the direct cause of this mess. I have to be truly honest here and say I am guilty of this as well. Paying for a game? Good luck unless I truly know it's going to be great (Overwatch, for example). Let me try it out for free, and fund it with cosmetic micro-transactions.
"In Olaf’s Adventures, published by Disney, clicking on a glowing cake that is not marked as an ad takes the player to a store;
Disney is not hurting for money, so why are they employing similarly devious tactics? The problem is obviously not just with "smaller developers, studios and companies".
After the cartoon was over came a 10 minute ad that does not look like an ad. It’s just a woman and 2 kids playing with toys. Ofc the toys being the focus.
It’s so dirty!
Somehow, "This time it is different!" But that seems incredibly myopic given any understanding of history.
I really hope HTML5 games sitting on simple websites go back to being a thing.
"What? You're five years old, how do you know about mortgages"
"Well.. I was just thinking... Interest rates have never been lower"
Slightly off topic, but how does everyone deal with these issues for older kids. I would like when they get to the age of asking for a playstation X to just not plug it in to the internet, so I don't have to worry about it. But I'm not sure offline capable consoles are going to exist by then.
We really don't want to advertise to children, they're absolutely awful for any meaningful non-impression metric for the advertiser. But there are definitely ad networks that are more than happy to turn a blind eye to serving ads to children.
Yeah, that's the reason not to advertise to children!
and I just realized that I was mildly exposed to in-game ads back then — in the form of product placement! (or rather brand placement?)
e.g. Cingular and Burger King (NFS Underground 2), Motorola (Tony Hawk's Underground 2)… but Cingular was a US thing, and Burger King didn't exist in my country back then either, so these ads were hilariously irrelevant to me.
Well of course, ever since OutRun there is blatant product placement in most racing games: car brands
There is a reason your DVD copy of Most Wanted has a BMW M3 on the cover
We are still a relatively small community, having just repositioned ourselves as a separate subsidiary of The Center for Humane Technology [1]. We will start a number of crowdsourced community-driven projects - all in the public domain - to help Re-align Technology To Humanity's Best Interests Again.
Just created our first Awareness Campaigns project and will soon launch our community website. Our forum has lotsa information about tech harms and their solutions. But we are just at the start, and need as much help as we can get.
Bought it for a family devices.
Imagine a program within your city, that would allow citizens to travel by public transit for free. All they would need to do is wear a pancho of sorts, completely covered with advertising. Although practical, this experience would be humiliating, annoying, and would probably be extremely beneficial for those who truly need it, and might be an eyesore for the rest of us.
Should we support our friends in need, and encourage something like this? Or is selling ourself (and others) to marketing and advertising going to hurt us in the long run? If so, then what is a fair price for keeping ads away?
i don't think it's inherently humiliating to wear an advertisement. plenty of people pay to do this today (eg baseball hats and branded clothing). now if the advertising is tasteful/stylish enough that people actually want to wear it, probably no one will pay you to do it. perhaps a middle ground exists where people can get paid to wear moderately tasteful ads. for example, the livery of a formula one car is a bit garish, but they do seem to make some effort to make the colors work together.
Happy to pay an up front fee for well designed , strategy based games and apps for limited use by my kids.
It's exceptionally annoying, because kids click on ads CONSTANTLY - that makes Google more likely to show the ads there and has me paying for absolutely useless clicks over and over.
This is my favorite after adblock.
* There's no paid quality content that you can use instead.
* Even if there is, you can't find it. Googe Play will shove pages after pages of "popular" useless toxic crap.
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.jak_linux.dns66/
If you're on iOS its FUBAR though.
Top third of page: "Please disable your ad blocker" Next third: "Kids' Apps Are Crammed With Ads" Final third: "Review our Cookie Policy"
Yeah, it's a wild west out there, alright.
Technically that's a good thing.
https://www.ted.com/talks/james_bridle_the_nightmare_videos_...
TL;DR - algorithms are not unbiased, in fact the bias of the writers is baked into them. See this HN post for similar observations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18184697