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.
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'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.
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.
Ads themselves are only a symptom. I suppose I'm profoundly disappointed in some aspects of our civilization, and the values it promotes, and I want my future kids to avoid such disappointment while still being cooperative players in the world (vs. defectors, in game-theoretic sense).
I am digressing a bit here, but I strongly encourage you to rethink this.
The act of hearing things they are not sufficiently mature to hear is the very best process for becoming mature in that way.
Of course I am not speaking of prurient matters or horrific tragedies (you should hand them neither Penthouse nor MAUS) but I think you should explain matters like the one at hand clearly, in an adult manner, and with adult vocabulary.
They may not understand more than 10% of it but that lack of understanding is a great challenge and the 10% they do grasp is a foundation for deeper thought.
I have three children and not only do we speak of things that are beyond their ken, with them, but we make a point not to adjust our vocabulary downward when we speak with them. They have risen to the challenge.
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.
Even search ads could still be made more fair (most of the time, if users are searching for something, do they really want to see ads instead of organic content?), but in my quixotic crusade against the malicious market players, I'd love to first get rid of the spammy ads - both in our digital media and on our physical streets - and ads that lie to people.
Advertising is like prisoner's dilemma: Companies are like prisoners and if they go overboard with advertising they are like defecting. If all companies had an agreement to rein themselves in, then there will be a rogue company sucking the attention away.
Then bottom feeders are going to target children.
Its one of the laundry list of things I can imagine a far future enlightened species looking back at us and thinking "wow, they sure wasted trillions of hours and dollars just trying to manipulate each other into spending their money differently".
Its absolutely necessary to participate on the individual level, but on the macroeconomic level it should look to anyone as being completely absurd and a huge waste of potential. Its a lot like overspending on the military - the primary function for advertising is zero sum while for the military it is a negative value, while you hope for circumstantial value to emerge and try to use it as an excuse to justify the whole when advertisers make entertaining ads (see the Superbowl Commercials or Flex Tape) or when the military produces scientific innovation.
Well, not money, because the money spent just ends up in someone else's pocket. It doesn't disappear or get consumed in the process. What we are wasting is potential value for society as a whole (the hours you rightly mention).
Unfortunately society has almost no use for "advertising trunks" so we should impose intelligent limits on advertising so that the mechanism of informing people what they can buy could be less like forest and more like orchard.
Lot's of good faith actors putting up lots of reasonable ads still results in a massive ad flood for the individual on the receiving end.
After some point the quality stops mattering, it's the sheer quantity that feels overwhelming.
Therefore, Marketers’ job is to create a lack in you. To make you feel “less than” as you are currently.
That does seem like the same thing a bully would do.
If drinking water from the tap resulted in 1 out of every 400000 drinks falling over dead, people wouldn't drink water from the tap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
And a lot of people still drive
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.
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.
By this definition, isn't selling a product that people don't need a worse offense? We should put all those toy manufacturers and restaurants and luxury car makers and fashion designers and barbers and perfume makers out of business.
I'm just overreacting to a rhetorical device, I know. I don't like advertising, and I express that preference in by preferring no ads where possible, but rarely am I willing to pay money up front to remove them. My intolerance of ads is not unbounded; in most places my intolerance is worth less than a dollar. I don't think advertising is an issue that we need to address as a society. The particular issue of advertising in children's games is more of an annoyance than anything else -- my kids only activate ads accidentally and then have to come to me to figure out how to get out of the trap that the ad has led them into, since closing the ad can be tricky.
Selling a product is passive. Advertising that product is active. A company selling a product is not abuse. However, stores serve as advertisements for the products they sell. I would say that such stores - and the salespeople within them - are abusive.
> my kids only activate ads accidentally and then have to come to me to figure out how to get out of the trap that the ad has led them into, since closing the ad can be tricky.
Advertising aside, would you agree imposing a difficult to navigate user interface is abusive? I would.
I think it's counterproductive to describe the very concept of advertising as abusive. Nevertheless, a large class of advertising as practiced on television, the web, and on mobile apps should be avoided. In many cases, I don't even have to venture into the realm of morality or ethics-- they just create such a bad UX (battery drain, autoplaying bullshit, interrupting content flow, double the perceived loudness of what I'm watching) that the only sensible thing for a human to do is remove ads altogether from their viewing/reading experience. It's possible to do that with only a modicum of effort, so that's what a lot of people like me will continuing doing.
Cars too are oversold and abusively advertised. And it really is psychological abuse, with horrific outcomes.
I believe that is what the parent comment is talking about.
Companies abuse (misuse) their power over consumers. Consumers are abused by companies through marketing.
I wholly agree with my sibling commenter that it is cruel for companies to market to us with the intent of separating us from our money.
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.
It is abuse. It is manipulation. It is deceit. Mendacity at it's most essential form. It's predating on a limited resource (attention) in an attempt to push out any other options by hooking you through as high a mental form of stimulation as possible.
There is no need or excuse for that type of behavior. We just justify it because we've allowed an entire industry to spring up around it unchecked. Only halting that industry's ability to exploit unchecked in the most vulnerable populations after extraordinarily drawn out legal battles.
Tobacco and alcohol are about the only two markets I can think if with explicitly constrained marketing practices. Gambling too, in terms of game design, which I still think is close enough in desired effect to be considered a marketing practice.
Can marketing be a good thing? Yes! When the consumer is actively searching for it. In it's current form? It represents an unwanted, unwarranted invasion of privacy often foisted on users with no recourse.
I have a three year old and he gets so absorbed in screen time and then he goes nuts whenever we tell him it's time to turn off the tv/phone/games. Within a couple of minutes he is usually much more relaxed and I am working to curb any usage that isn't during a road trip/flight.
Edit: the video, not your three year old :-)
Nah, call it what it is.
Consider it in the context of lotteries, how they're advertised, and who they tend to mostly affect. Or fast food. Abuse, for sure.
Imagine two cities; one allows billboards and transit ads, one doesn't. Everything else being equal, which product wins in the ad-city? Usually the product with the ad dollars, unless there is a substantial difference in quality / price.
Which product wins in the non-ad city? The one that is better or cheaper.
The insidious thing is that brandable food products have to be processed in order to be unique. Anyone can grow an apple, but only Coca-Cola can make Vanilla Coke. So not only are we burning away attention / psyche with all these ads, we're also naturally incentivized to activities that aren't good for us or the planet.
If I had my way I'd ban it all. No advertising / marketing other than product demos and maybe search results[0]. There's too many downsides.
[0] Search is a special case because people are working to find a solution to their problem. For example, you may snore at night and search "nighttime snore mouthpiece" not knowing that there are other solutions like devices that detect snoring and automatically adjust your pillow. So in the search case the incentives are much more likely to be aligned.
Perhaps Google's original mission is the best one - accurate, impartial search.
That's a terribly defeatist attitude, especially for someone who is writing a message on a colossal web of copper and forged glass, powered by lightning and runic commands, who probably doesn't live under the thumb of a king or suffer from polio, smallpox, or plague, and likely travels in a chariot drawn by elemental fire and oil extracted from the bones of the Earth, and who is far less likely to die from violence than at any point in history.
There's been a lot accomplished in the last 2000 years, and plenty of that achievement is fairly recent, scientifically and sociopolitically.
This situation becomes a repeated lesson that not everyone has your best interests in mind. For advertising aimed at kids the stakes are low (bugging your parents or wasting allowance on toys, games, candy, etc). Would kids/young adults be at a disadvantage if they don't learn to "tune out" that kind of manipulation?
I get why advertising exists and I think it probably did and can fill a need in a limited way but the incentives are all wrong. Ideally advertising would be a way of leading all buyers of mousetraps to the best mousetrap. Instead it is a way for the lesser mousetrap manufacturers/ the lazy/ the actively evil to foist inferior products on people via emotional appeals. We have homes filled to the brim wth crap we don't need because advertising suggests this next product will remove that existential dread or feeling of emptiness or impostor syndrome from your life.
That's the best case scenario. More often than not, advertisers are actively malicious.
By that, I mean they are attempting to manipulate people into taking actions that are actively damaging to their health/finances/etc in order to enrich the advertisers. The fact that this is so accepted by society that hundreds of billions of dollars are spent doing it each year is absolutely repulsive.
I think this shift was largely due to the influence of the ideas of Edward Bernays, cousin of Sigmund Freud and arguably father of spin/Public Relations., which is largely a re-branding of Propaganda.
As an example of his work in an effort to get more women to smoke in public they were re-contextualized as "torches of freedom" and women were paid to smoke at the Easter Parade in New York. Somewhere along the line a shift towards selling a product (cigarettes) and selling on someone's unconscious desires and motivations. (to be seen as hip and with it)
Car marketing is one of the easiest places to see the change. Looking at early 20th century advertisements more of a focus is placed on qualitative benefits, such as cubic inches of trunk space or longevity of the engine or value for your money, compared to modern advertisements that focus convincing you that the car will make your roadtripping family happy, or make you appear successful, or environmentally conscious.
That said, There are plenty of car ads about how safe or reliable a car is, and hatchback ads routinely mention how spacious the trunk is. When 99% of cars are good enough for 99% of people (numbers made up) why should you buy any specific car other than the most cost-effective one? The experience that the car gives you. That's what car manufacturers are selling.
Advertising does not inherently rest on lying to people.
The problem is, once you strip away this you wind up with a definition of abuse that is essentially "emotionally manipulating people to feel what someone else wants them to". Which is an excellent description of the vast majority of human interaction.
Not if you notice that for vast majority of human interaction, that sentence ends with ", done in good faith and for mutual gain". Most individual interactions like this. Advertising definitely isn't.
I think there may be more room for subtlety here. I've known plenty of marketers in my life. Most of them have genuinely believed that what they were marketing was something to improve the lives of the would-be customer and were acting in good faith to make the prospective customer aware of this. This ice cream? It'll taste good! This salad? Nutritious and filling! This video game or book? Hours of entertainment! This cheap beer? It can lubricate the social events you value!
Are there exceptions to this? Absolutely! Philip Morris springs immediately to mind. It may be excessively cynical to dismiss all advertisements as deliberately deceptive, not for mutual gain, or in bad faith is all.
1. http://www.audiocura.com/the-impact-of-music-on-neurochemist...
And lying is similar to violence in that both can be used to make you do what you otherwise would not do, and in particular can be used to make you act against your interests (an observation due to ethicist Sissela Bok). So the description of "abuse" is appropriate.
To the contrary, I think abuse is rather weak. I’d go further. Advertising is raping of the mind. Regardless of the medium (billboards, mail, spam calls, video, audio,..) the mind and senses are deviously polluted and raped with unwanted content without any consent.
Please don't abuse words like 'abuse' and 'aggression' by exploiting them. But even if you did, that wouldn't be 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.
Because there are ads selling high sugar and/or fat low nutrient foods to impressionable kids as 'fun'.
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 if you're saying "Children are not old enough to do business with shrewd adults." That's very fair.
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...
Everyone on this thread hates ads, but that's a stretch there bud.
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?
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.
Pretty much every parent says something like this about their child
Personally, I've never heard a parent say anything like that about their kid and my own kids were nowhere near that advanced at that age.
Every (15-20 at the last kids birthday party I attended) parent I know give pretty realistic accounts of their child's development and are pretty humble about their own deficiencies or challenges as parents.
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.
2) our kids (they’re twins) saw their first cartoon around 2,5 yo. They didn’t seen a TV on before that. And of course it fascinated them as any screen can do. It was Cars and I show them in 4 parts on 4 consecutive days.
3) Our TV is plugged on a RPI with kodi and you couldn’t use it with the TV remote (only with our smartphones) until they were 5 (and I bought a TV compatible with Anynet), so even if they managed to start the tv, they couldn’t go further. Maybe they did, maybe not, but they never told us if they did :)
Are you also vegan? ;)
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
You can. Click on the timestamp of that comment, and the "favourite" link will be there.
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!
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 ...
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.
"No, Claire, no internet until you learn how BGP hijacks work!" Who does that? Half of human progress in computers has been hiding all of the technical stuff behind a magic curtain. It's cool if your kids want to take a peek behind it, but to force it on them is just so strange.
Appeal to authority/tradition as an argument for ignorance? Not very compelling.
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.
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.
Delta planes with in-seat screens play ads pre-takeoff, and you can't turn them off or mute them. (Or at least you couldn't when I last tried several years ago. That customer abuse was the last time I flew Delta.)
The other day I went to get gas and was subjected to in-pump ads that I couldn't turn off or mute.
It may not be coming to our televisions soon, but it's already there in many other places.
Or, at least, this is on the medium-term todo list, and I hope I get to play with it someday. Obviously can't really commercialize the idea... :)
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.
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.
I also don’t believe the viewing was done in school, but the kids were classmates who met in school.
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 former can be considered a form of art; the latter is just cancer.
The mere engagement of internet ads is often just a crude attempt to program peoples decisions by pressing all the right psychological buttons.
Of course, Superbowl ads arguably press those same buttons, but I tend to think that typical online ads are optimized to press those buttons as hard as possible all the time. Being subjected to that is exhausting and frustrating.
Incidentally, that's why I decided to quit playing MMO's (and most video games) 10 years ago.
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.
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.
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, like, one of the first things we were taught about using an encyclopedia as a tool for research papers in elementary school, long before Wikipedia or even the Web was a thing.
That's kind of the nature of tertiary sources, particularly broad-focus ones that boil down complex domains to short articles, including print encyclopedias.
> To be very, very clear, I'm not anti-Wikipedia, I just think a "real" encyclopedia would be much better.
The actual reviews that have been done, starting with Nature’s in 2005, have not supported the conclusion that Britannica or other print encyclopedias are much better than Wikipedia, either in terms of accuracy of factual content or in terms of things like providing appropriate citations.
The game content is basically all branded characters.
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.
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.
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.
I'd rather my kids be reading than sitting thru ads.
But the idea that "more exposure" to ads makes you somehow more resilient to them is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Does Facebook make people more well-adjusted? Does instagram make people less inclined to be shallow? Does increased time on Twitter make people less vitriolic?
When digital networks have an adverse effect on the human psyche (mainly ad networks and social networks), the solution is very demonstrably not "just watch more and you'll become inoculated against them".
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. :)
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?
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.
Sure. Let's say you want to learn about a new product through "active discovery." What do you do that doesn't involve other people telling you that it's good?
>Make something, make details available. If people need it, they will find it and buy it.
Discord became so popular because it's good, right? Not at all because they advertised and sponsored the hell out of things, right?
>No, I want better products that I actually need, not more, or just newer.
And with no advertising nobody is going to bother improving their products, because nobody new will be able to compete.
>We're reading different things if that was your takeaway.
It says quite directly that research has found associations. That's a correlation and not causation.
>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've tried making things and found out the hard way how difficult it is for whatever I made to be found.
Not only is is painfully obvious that you can still compare things, the drive to improve is a natural side effect of still being able to compare on factors. Advertising isn't part of this loop. It's there to buy influence.
Most of the crap I buy on Amazon or Ebay, or in the supermarket; that is to say, 90% of my purchases don't involve advertising. I bought them because I wanted them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
That just isn't true. Game publishers and developers these days use psychological tricks to keep people engaged and paying money into them.
>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.
Lootboxes are gambling no matter how you try to justify them. You pay money for the chance to win a prize with no guarantee you will. Protecting your citizens from predatory practices is not curbing the freedom of it's citizens.
>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."
There's 2 reasons games don't have marketplaces, neither are because these companies have a heart and want to stop gambling. One is that a marketplace requires trading of some kind. Trading can reduce their income on usually cosmetic items. Look at Overwatch, there's no marketplace because Activision Blizzard know they can make more money through just lootboxes because most people only want a skin for a specific character not a random chance to get something they probably don't want. The other reason is they don't want to be associated with "real gambling". Everyone's seen what's happened with Valve and the fire they've been coming under for just ignoring third party gambling sites for years. But they obviously don't care about the consumer when they're using the same tactics as slot machines to get them to spend as much money as possible.
"Psychological tricks."
Do you use that term to describe your restaurant experience as well? "The cook used psychological tricks to make the food more delicious."
People have simply figured out what others like and made games more in line with that. Yes, they are psychological tricks, but almost everything humans create employ psychological tricks of some kind to make the experience better.
>Lootboxes are gambling no matter how you try to justify them.
Not according to the law.
>You pay money for the chance to win a prize with no guarantee you will.
There is a guarantee that you will get something every time.
>There's 2 reasons games don't have marketplaces, neither are because these companies have a heart and want to stop gambling.
A business is not supposed to "have a heart." It makes absolutely no sense to expect that. A free market doesn't actually work if you expect people "to have a heart."
The reason why most games don't have marketplaces is that most games do not have a large amount of players or it does not fit into the theme of the game. It simply is not worth the effort to implement such a system for most games.
>But they obviously don't care about the consumer when they're using the same tactics as slot machines to get them to spend as much money as possible.
Do you know what else uses the same tactics as slot machines? Almost everything that involves people. Humans seem to enjoy getting rewarded in a semi-random manner more than consistently. This even includes people interacting with one another. We grow more attached to people who sometimes treat us coldly than people who always treat us nicely.
I don't know if you use these terms on purpose or if it's simply an accident, but the way you refer to things such as "just like slot machines" or "this is gambling because xyz simplification" shows that you're trying to evoke an emotional reaction to paint something in a negative light. Those types of arguments don't work when the other person isn't emotionally invested in the same values as you.
I loathe lootboxes. I think they're disgusting, but I also understand that this kind of demand for regulation will only hurt players. If other people don't like lootboxes as well, then the market will take care of it. If the market doesn't take care of it then it turns out that some people do like lootboxes. You can then have a niche for games that have and games that don't have lootboxes.
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.
>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.
The question is whether they are happy with their choices.
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.
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.
On another note, by age 7 you would expect them to be able to launch Age of Empires on their own though.
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)
What you want sounds a lot more like a normal game console.
Truly becoming special by just staying normal.
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.
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?
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.
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.
IMHO it was a really bad game.
However, to me again, it was a really nice piece of addicting software.
The versions of Angry Birds there are ad-free and in-app-purchase-free.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In the UK you can report many of those ads to the regulator who can take action.
Thanks for the tip! Didn't know about common sense media and it's exactly what I was looking for!
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.
Fixed that for you...
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.
"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.
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?
I just don't like the whole concept of ads with children's education. Also, we are trying for a low distraction feel and ads would really make things difficult for some children who really need to have the distractions at minimal.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
There are a few interesting channels, but otherwise I may as well be watching regular tv. The suggestions I get are also incredibly bad.
You're not weird.
* ssl.google-analytics.com (tracking)
* pagead2.googlesyndication.com (a google ad domain)
* pubads.g.doubleclick.net (another google ad domain)
* sb.scorecardresearch.com (tracking)
* imasdk.googleapis.com (The Google IMA SDK for ads within a video)
* localization.services.pbs.org (perhaps this one is benign)
From their Privacy Policy [1]:
> We also may share aggregated or anonymized information with third parties, including to help us develop content and services that we hope you or your child will find of interest or to help these third parties develop their own products and service offerings.
The above paragraph with the associated list of domains being used above screams targeting to me
> We may allow third parties to place and read their own cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies to collect information through the Services.
So they let 3rd parties do whatever they want. The full privacy policy is followed with an example use case of how its helpful and useful, but just like Facebook's privacy policy the examples are misdirection.
And else just make them watch finger family videos for hours.
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).
It's such a bless for parents.
* 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?
The ethical ramifications of third party data are important but the cbeebies apps do a great job of providing engaging, add free content.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Does complaining via Twitter count? Because I did, and typically I get a response because "public shaming" seems to be the best way to get support these days. I also complained about the Chromebook/Android game ad and got ... crickets.
Unfortunately, taking many minutes or a few hours from my day to report the issue to Amazon or Google doesn't seem like a valuable use of my time - I guess that's the problem :(
It should be two clicks/presses to report an ad violation, especially on a device sold specifically to kids (Kindle Fire).
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.
Y-har matey, good to see a shipmate aboard! In the age of advertising often times the 'legit' sources where one can buy content still show ads or handcuff your free use of it. BitTorrent (over Tor)/I2PSnark/IPFS/Freenet/etc will probably remain the best way to obtain digital consumables. Big (and small) media still doesn't understand that being anti-user is a Bad Thing(tm).
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.
[0] https://image.redbull.com/rbcom/010/2012-11-08/1331578705540...
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