Useful tech suggestions/considerations for kiddos

It’s Chri$tma$ time, the time when all the blogs attempt to make some money for the holidays. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but there are a lot of suggestions for products that are just monetization efforts. Here’s some advice for 7-10 year olds.

The perfect gift doesn’t exist.

The high plastic low performing gift either makes them sad or is the greatest thing ever. Large RC car awesome. Crappy controller booo.

“Great for kids” usually means “buy our junk your kid isn’t going to be interested in”

More and more connected gifts are going to require serious adult investment in time as there are tons of hoops to jump through. Sorry, you need to bust open the box and play with it first.

Check with them and the internet – nothing worse than getting an (X in ecosystem Y) and finding out they need an (A in ecosystem B and a subscription for service P) – your gift suddenly becomes costly to operate.

Does that shiny new tablet, phone, etc do anything different? Is it locked into an ecosystem like Amazon, Apple, Google, some off brand foreign app market? You can’t just buy gear… I mean you can, but then you have things like an Apple tablet when all the content a family owns is on Amazon.

Is this going to sit on a shelf as more e-waste or toys that worked for two months?

Are you buying that it’s actually a STEM toy? Most of them aren’t. STEM – Part of this nutritional breakfast.

Is this a game that requires you to play? Are you going to play with them?

Stop buying junk as an afterthought or a perceived requirement.

It’s better for a kid to get something with thought, or an experience, or a candy bar, than getting a gift that missed the target by what they consider miles.