Alexa... please help me help my children with homework

PANICKED parents are turning to smart speakers such as Amazon’s Alexa to answer their children’s maths questions, a survey has found.

More than two thirds of parents polled have turned to voice assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home because their children’s homework is becoming more difficult.

The research, conducted by Talktalk, surveyed more than 1,000 parents in April 2022.

It found that 66 per cent of parents said they felt embarrassed for not knowing the right answer in front of their children, with 55 per cent admitting they had secretly used voice assistants to answer their children’s questions.

Jonathan Kini, managing director at Talktalk, said the report showed that we are living in a “golden age of gadgets”.

“Customers are embracing the smart tech takeover,” he said. “As am I – just the other day I found myself using our voice assistant to help with my son’s homework.”

History, geography and maths were deemed to be the most difficult subjects, with more than half of parents saying they needed help with answering Key Stage Two questions, such as the names of King Henry VIII’S wives. Other common questions included the global population to the nearest billion, questions on the Pythagoras theorem, the names of the Hindu festivals of Holi and Diwali and the date of the Great Fire of London.

Three quarters of parents said they thought that school work is harder now than when they were at school, while more than half – 52 per cent – said they had given the wrong answers to their child’s homework.

The poll found that more than half of parents had bought new smart device technology in the last year to improve their day-to-day lives.

Earlier this month Dave Limp, senior vice president of devices and services at Amazon, said Alexa had “adapted” during the pandemic as children in lockdown asked more questions about homework.

It comes after MPS voiced concerns about Alexa’s “sinister side” amid fears that smart speakers may be spying on their owners. This month the digital, culture, media and sport select committee said it was launching an inquiry to explore how virtual assistants such as Alexa and Siri, as well as wearable technology such as Fitbits, affect their users and the implications for privacy and data collection.