Hold off the tech for kids

Amazon’s new children’s version of its smart speaker is the latest push by tech companies to target youngsters.

Earlier this year, Facebook released Messenger Kids, Google has YouTube Kids, and Amazon also has a kids-specific tablet.

Then there’s the thousands of apps and games targeted at young children. While teens and their parents have been dealing with the demands of tech for a while, some of these new products, such as Messenger Kids, target children as young as 6.

Tech companies say they make kids’ versions as a way to safely introduce young people to tech.

But I hope parents are more wary. Tech companies are not altruistic, they exist to make money and young kids represent an untapped market.

It also helps create brand loyalty. Google, Apple and

Six-year-olds don’t need to be able to send their friends messages and young kids don’t need smart speakers.

Microsoft are pushing their products into schools for the same reason.

Amazon’s Echo Dot Kids Edition is for children aged 5 to 12 and it has parental controls to make its content kid-friendly.

However, Amazon also recently announced it wants to transition Alexa from being a personal assistant to being a salesperson.

Tech companies also make their products addictive.

The games and apps are designed to promote the ‘‘near miss’’ phenomenon, where instead of a player feeling as though they’ve lost, they feel like they’ve nearly won. This instils a compelling need to play again.

Social media is also addictive. The need to get ‘‘likes’’ brings many problems young kids don’t need in their lives.

Tech has enjoyed an extended honeymoon period during which their products and services easily made us ooh and ahh.

That time is over and we need to be more questioning about tech and its impact on our lives and those of our children.

Six-year-olds don’t need to be able to send their friends messages, and young kids don’t need smart speakers or to spend hours watching YouTube while Google gathers their data and serves them up endless videos.

The children of today won’t know a world without smartphones and social media. Tech will dominate their whole lives so my advice to parents is to limit that exposure for as long as possible. Also, it’s a lot easier to say no to the tech companies once, rather than dozens of demands from your child.