Tablet ad causing a techno headache

I TRIP over the topic of technology quite often, because it has crept into every corner of our world and will not be ignored – but there comes a time when every mother (especially in summer) must stand up and shout: switch it off!

You and I are compiling our holiday lists and things now, in an urgent attempt to be organised, so possibly you may have seen the full-page advert by a well-known retailer in the papers recently. Blink and you’d miss it – but my friend Nina didn’t and, being an activist type, she’s made sure nobody else will, either.

This morning she showed it to me: a colour photo advertising cheap, hooded towels. The product and general idea are fine, but whoever dreamed up the accessories in what should be a Very Simple Idea has much to answer for. Or doesn’t have kids and possibly owns shares in Google, Apple, Microsoft and such.

There they were, three children in hooded towels, smiling, as advert kids do – sitting on the beach staring at a computer tablet.

What type of message, asks Nina, does an advert like that send to people like us who thought that beaches were places to actively look at, touch, feel and perhaps eat (reluctantly and accidentally) sand and salt water? Perhaps, if we’re lucky, we might spot a real fish in a rock pool.

I simply don’t care if this advert is inoffensive, legal and just a design agency’s Friday afternoon gone mildly wrong; the fact is that we’re sending messages all the time, if we’re in the media – and to me, the symbol of a child sitting on a beach, holding an iPad, is wrong.

And it’s not wrong just because I, a confirmed fuddyduddy and old-fashioned get-your-hands-dirty kinda gal says it is; there’s scientific evidence proving we’re pushing our kids (with us not far behind) down the wrong road here.

The Telegraph reports that a growing number of babies and young toddlers simply don’t have the motor skills needed to play with building blocks because of their “addiction” to tablet computers and smartphones. Members of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers said children aged three or four could “swipe a screen” – but had little dexterity in their fingers as a result of so much screen-time.

Obviously, this is one report in one country and makes a great headline, as it’s dramatic. But why not take the warning seriously – especially now, at Christmas, when the very first toys in a brochure are screen and technologybased. Have you noticed?

Dare I suggest to advertisers we might want our children to build a sand castle with their actual hands, rather than magically creating and dismantling a virtual one on a high resolution screen.

And for heaven’s sake, put buckets and spades back on the beach.