I'm curious: don't any other people here think 2-year-old kids shouldn't be playing iPad games at all?
I'm convinced that watching TV is harmful to a child's intellectual development. (And there's an established body of evidence to support that.)
As a kid, I hated my hippie Montessori teacher mom for allowing me only one hour of TV per week as a kid in the late 70s and early 80s (elementary school; I usually chose the Duke boys, and later Knight Rider). But, as an adult, I cite it often as one of the things I admire most about the way she raised me (no limits on books, nor daytime outdoor play after school, nor building things), especially after coming to understand how much easier it is to set a precocious and hyper wild little monkey in front of the boob tube so the parents can get a couple hours of peace.
I do think video games (especially good ones) are probably much less harmful than TV, and that they do even have some net positives for the user, in terms of developing various human abilities (cognitive and otherwise). But isn't two years old too young? Shouldn't kids of that age, instead of learning in-game physics, be learning real physics? Like with balls, marbles, and blocks, running and falling down, and not with animated honeypots and flying unicorns?
My own kid won't be here for a few more months, so I'm not preaching; just honestly asking. I know little kids love iPad games... but they love eating sugar cubes, too.
> don't any other people here think 2-year-old kids shouldn't be playing iPad games at all?
> My own kid won't be here for a few more months, so I'm not preaching; just honestly asking.
> Shouldn't kids of that age, instead of learning in-game physics, be learning real physics? Like with balls, marbles, and blocks, running and falling down, and not with animated honeypots and flying unicorns?
You are in fact preaching, just not from direct experience raising children.
Please do not give your future 2-year-old marbles to learn physics with. Choking hazard. Harder to swallow an iPad.
Our former 2 year-old and current two year-old have neither choked on their marbles. Why? Supervision. You play with your kids and then you can stop them doing stupid things that are going to cause them high-level harm.
The hard part I find is letting them hurt themselves as part of their learning.
Indeed our 2 year-old just used a kitchen knife (about as long as his forearm) for the first time a couple of weeks ago to chop the potatoes he peeled. Close supervision.
"He could swallow a marble", well yes, he could bash his brother's head in with the corner of an iPad, get hit by a meteorite, run in to a wall, drown himself in the toilet, etc..
If you supervise your children, they won't swallow marbles or anything else. There are many vendors of wood toys (usually European) that are meant for small children. An ipad, is in the same realm as TV -- not meant for small kids.
two year olds are great with marbles when supervised. most of them have long abandoned the idea of putting non-food into their mouths by this age, and their development thrives on supervision and interaction regardless of what materials they are exploring.
> Please do not give your future 2-year-old marbles to learn physics with. Choking hazard.
You're aware that they put CHOKING HAZARD labels on things not because those things should be kept away from children at all times, but to alert inattentive parents to supervise their children?
The CHOKING HAZARD is not an intrinsic property of the object, but rather of the situation.
Your average 2 year old is awake for anything from 10-14 hours, so even you let your kid play with the iPad 2 hours a day (which I'm sure most people will agree is a lot), that still leaves 8-12 hours a day for Not iPad. I can't speak for all 2 year olds, but my 2 year old needs some down time after 8 hours of running around and general playing.
Further there is a lot more to the iPad than simply "video games". For example, my daughter loves looking at pictures. Both of herself and her friends, but also of her grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, people whom she only sees a few times year and so the photos are the main way she has to remember them between visits. And even the "video games" are genuinely educational, teaching things like shape matching, colours, the names of animals and so on.
Then there is the "selfish" aspect. After 3 hours running around the playground followed by an hour of playing the build-a-tower-of-blocks-and-knock-them-down game I want a few minutes to enjoy the luxuries of life, like going to the bathroom by myself or drinking a cup of coffee without someone trying to spill it, and the iPad is a good way to distract her for those precious minutes.
My son (4yo) barely watches TV (maybe one hour a week or so) but spends a good amount of time on the iPad.
There's a wide range of activities on the iPad, going from plain video games to pure learning bits (letters, sounds, cooking, 3d moves etc) which makes it much more interesting than only "video games" IMO (and this generates a lot of discussions centered around learning too!).
On the frequency of use: it's pretty much like email for adults. You have to learn when to stop and when to do something else, learn to keep a balance.
At first we had small cards (like 2 x 10mn and 1 x 20mn for each day) to ensure he would not spend more time than we thought was good for him.
Now he mostly plays at his own rhythm, and tend to say at some point: "Dad, I played a lot on the iPad, now I need to take some fresh air".
Apart from that, all the remaining signs (learning to write, space placement, handling legos, social exchanges, sport etc) show no "damages" caused by the iPad :)
In conclusion: for me balance is everything (but like for most subjects); and there's a lot of good things to pick in the iPad.
Well, sounds like your son is doing great, that's wonderful. :)
I concede your point that the iPad can stretch/blur the notion of what a "game" is, in interesting ways. Although I am inclined to limit my kids' "screen time" (to zero, at two years old), I would never choose to limit my kids' "book time",.
But perhaps my thinking about it is too coarse, since iPad apps can be hybrids of both, or combine their attributes into something completely new.
Perhaps I will try out your time ticket idea and see how it goes. (But not from 2 years old... maybe 3 or 4.)
I've been revising my attitudes towards TV lately. There's good content on the TV, while content on iPad is not necessarily getting any better - mostly addictive games that bide the player to come back again and again. BBC produces a lot of accessible programs about engineering, history.
> I'm convinced that watching TV is harmful to a child's intellectual development. (And there's an established body of evidence to support that.)
There might be evidence that early exposure to television, before the child's neurological development is ready to deal with it, is harmful. But I'm not aware of "an established body of evidence" proving that TV is harmful. Do you have sources? I'm very interested in seeing such sources, as I used to be under the impression that TV is harmful, but I am now convinced otherwise.
Be careful ignoring the scientific method here. You are equating a fear of bad side effects from TV with bad side effects with iPad use. Fear is not the scientific method.
There are many dimensions to consider when evaluating harm. For example, in early childhood development, the child desperately wants to imitate the adult (or role model), and will suffer certain side effects (e.g., problems with self confidence) if forbidden to imitate. Thus even if there is harm in using the iPad, there could easily be more harm in forbidding its use (but this can easily be remedied by never allowing the child to see the adult using the iPad).
I urge you to be careful about following any lines of parenting that mold the child (e.g., the child should be outside playing ball, not inside doing X). I see parents force their kids to conform with preset ideas of how a child should be, ignoring how early child development works, and thus cause pscyhological harm (e.g., internalization of fear of the parent). An analogy would be the parent teaching the child how to walk by grabbing the kid's legs and moving them in micro-adjustments; the kid will end up with poor motor control.
You should take a look at the research - there is established evidence for the impact of television on language development. The book NurtureShock gives a nice overview, but if you want to go directly to the research papers it looks like there are plenty of papers like this:
The problem with TV in particular seems to be the lack of interactivity. Children learn best by getting meaningful feedback from other people, and television cannot provide that. iPad apps and computers should be able to overcome that limitation, but I think we're early in the process of understanding the most effective ways to provide that for children, especially young children.
Child development research shows that screen time - any form - is not beneficial for during the first several years. (even if it is 'educational', it will do nothing to aid the child's development in any way). No wonder Disney, owner of Baby Einstein, was required to reimburse families up to the cost of four DVDs, for falsely advertising that the Baby Einstein DVDs would improve or develop the child's intellect.
You know, iPads are awesome for kids. You know why?
2 yr olds can't pull the key caps off of them.
(unlike, say, macbook pros.)
So, I've got three, from 2.5 to 7.5. They've seen mommy and daddy working with computers and ipads all their life. (well, ipads for the last 2 years). No tv. Minimal netflix. A little screen time for other stuff, maybe a couple hours a week. Their latest thing is downloading lego instructions and reviewing them to see how stuff goes together, and to see if they have enough parts to build some of the sets we haven't bought.
The third one has gotten a lot more screen time than the other two at their ages, just because he's got to do what the big boys are doing. He's only twigged on to what a mouse does in the last couple of months, because the ipad is so much more direct. If the touch screen doesn't work, then it's a broken computer. It's strange seeing that distinction so differently between the kids, as the older ones didn't get the whole touch screen thing till they were much older.
There's a lot of interesting observations you can make about UI when you're watching someone with a much different POV than you have.
My son watched TV when he was small - after a full day of high stimulus activities in an educational daycare program, he needed downtime. He started playing with the Xbox 360 when he was five and saved his money from odd jobs for us and neighbors and bought himself a Wii when he was 9.
Maybe he won't be the next Steve Jobs because of it.
But what has been interesting is that recently, he is much less interested in TV and video games and far more interested in physical world gaming with his peers: Bey Blades, Pokemon, Yugioh, and in particular Warhammer. He's been buying figures, paints and brushes not the latest version of Madden with his money.
Keep in mind that it was easier for your mother to do what she did than it is to do something similar today - kids programming wasn't available on 13 channels 24x365 and it was considered inappropriate to market to children in the way that is now standard [see Juliet Schor's Born to Buy: http://www.amazon.com/Born-Buy-Commercialized-Consumer-Cultu...]
> I'm convinced that watching TV is harmful to a child's intellectual development. (And there's an established body of evidence to support that.)
Is there? I dislike children being raised by television as much as the next guy, but the chapter in Freakonomics on child development says there's no correlation between children's test scores and the amount of television they watch, according to the data from ECLS (http://nces.ed.gov/ecls/).
Are test scores the only indicators of a child's development? I know enough people who have excellent test scores but have no initiative, no confidence, no curiosity, no hunger for learning things that are not on the test, no drive and no creativity.
Of course, anecdote != data, so meh. But I do have a hunch that TV and social media both breed a passive consumption habit that can be hard to detect and even harder to get rid of.
I think there may be significant benefits to working with these types of abstractions at a vary young age. Learning to code before I knew who to write in my native language might have harmed my ability to write in English but it created a level of comfort when dealing with programming code that may not be available to people who started later in life.
Playing games may not seem productive, but the types of games children play do prepare them for more complex challenges later in life, and if anything I think computers will become more important over time. So, I suspect spending a few hours a week banging on an iPad is probably more useful than harmful for the average 2 year old.
As a hacker, I'm sure you know, ideals are often different than what actually happens. I often see kids in restaurants. Half of them are screechy. The other half have something to play with. Usually iPads or iPhones, because they're easy to carry, and don't get boring. They're not a choking hazard and won't cut you. Sure, you might like the idea of keeping them away from video games, but it's probably not going to work out that well when you become a parent. The real world is often more difficult than general statements on HN.
You see my kids on a plane, and I've probably deployed the i devices. Waaaay more freely than they get at home. It's a treat, and it can work well in reasonably sized doses.
Regrettably one of the biggest offenders in terms of usability for kids apps is Apple itself. The introduction of multi-touch gestures made a complete mess out of kids apps. For example, if you've ever watched a young one interact with an iPad you would have seen them plant their paws on the screen and do things with 3+ fingers very frequently.
Imagine what happens then: The whole app moves up, down or worst, sideways and switches to another app altogether. This interrupts the experience and is very confusing. I've seen this first hand. It is truly perplexing for children in the 2 to 7 year old range.
Another side-effect is that this makes it nearly impossible to write apps that actually encourage the little ones to fully engage and plant their paws on the device. Without turning off multi-touch gestures the app won't be good for more than three seconds of use. What's worst is that you also stand a good chance to get negative reviews on the app store from frustrated parents who don't understand that this is not the developer's fault.
Imagine the thrill of driving around town while your kids is playing with the iPad in the back seat and complaining/whining/crying every thirty seconds because he/she accidentally switched from the nice educational app you had them play with to your Facebook page due to accidentally using the app switching gesture. Brilliant.
While multi-touch gestures might be a good idea (I as an adult never use them) they provide no way for developers to disable them within their app, thus causing usability problems for kids (and probably some use cases with people with motor impediments).
Yes, the user can disable multi-touch altogether from settings. As an app developer you have to decide whether or not you want to put up a notice, warning or info page on your app warning parents about this problem and recommending that they disable multi-touch. Might you incur Apple's wrath for doing so? Don't know.
I think this is probably a significant part of why multitasking gestures are turned off by default. They won't ever be on for any device whose owner doesn't feel comfortable poking around in Settings.
I've seen an app on startup recommend turning them off if they're on. (Which doesn't mean that Apple considers that OK, of course, just that the reviewer of that one app did.)
> As an app developer you have to decide whether or not you want to put up a notice, warning or info page on your app warning parents about this problem and recommending that they disable multi-touch. Might you incur Apple's wrath for doing so? Don't know.
Ouch. I hadn't even thought of that.
I was just going to say it's ridiculous that you have this powerful device with advanced touch screen and you're developing software for it, but Apple prevents you from simply exerting control over the device.
A non-crippled OS should give you near exclusive access with minimal meddling, like Desktop PC games. Full screen, raw touch data and no accidental gestures.
I don't understand why hackers could abide by this.
(the next part is a bit off topic btw, but maybe some professional iOS app devs can shed some light on the matter for me?)
I work with kids (a bit older, ages 8-12) teach them to do creative things on the computer (GameMaker, GIMP, some HTML, etc). I'm still working to figure out a good method to learn them actual code (not all, but some are definitely smart enough). A lot of them ask me if I can teach them "how to make apps". I don't know (don't have a smartphone or tablet), but at some point I thought ok let's figure that out.
The kid had an iPod Touch so we started looking around for some iOS SDK or whatever (I feared writing a whole app would be too large of a project for him, but now I wanted to know and it taught us both a valuable lesson).
Can anyone who writes iOS apps maybe confirm this for me, because it seems pretty much impossible:
- You can't actually load an app that you just coded onto your own device, to try it out. Instead you can only test it in an emulator.
- The only way to get the new app onto the actual device is via the AppStore. Is that really true? Do even professional app developers not see their app run on an actual device instead of the emulator before the app is in a suitable state (as judged from the emulator tests) to place on the AppStore and even then only if they or someone buys it? Really?
- This SDK/emulator kit is only available for the Mac. So if you don't own a Mac, you can't develop iOS apps.
- Money. Does the SDK/emulator kit cost money or not? I couldn't figure it out because I stopped looking as soon as I saw it was Mac-only, anyway. But depending on which route I took through the Apple ID developer program website, it alternatively told me it was free and that it cost me $100. And then to be able to place the program onto a physical device I own, I need to pay a yearly $100 for the AppStore?
(I probably got some details wrong here and maybe I missed some programs or ways to do things so please correct me)
The centre I work at is mostly run by volunteers and doesn't use Macs or has $100/yr to give to Apple for the "privilege" of teaching a new generation of hacker kids how to develop applications for their petty locked up hardware/software universe. So there won't be any "how to make apps for iOS" lessons in the foreseeable future.
That's what I learned. And the kid that joined me on this wild goose chase learned that he most definitely will be getting an Android as his next smartphone.
I'm with you, but it has to be a choice based on each parent's values. I personally LOVE video games, but my 2 year old hasn't even seen one yet, and I'm not trying to get her into them any time soon. Especially with TV I think there is plenty of time for kids to learn about it later, and they likely will not need my help to do so. Kids aren't missing anything by not playing games / watching TV, but if they spend too much of their time doing either of those they will miss out. My biggest concern is that I do not want media robbing my kids of their childhood.
Yeah, that's what I mean. I am sympathetic to onemoreact's opinion above that gaming does imbue the child with a useful mastery over abstract/virtual environments and activities, and that those skills are growing more important as we humans augment ourselves with technology. I just think that 2 is probably too young; those benefits are almost certainly going to accrue even if the child never touches a video game until, say, 5.
There's a good TED talk where they go into the differences in language processing in a child of 12 months vs 15 months. Infants and very young children are doing so fucking much to deal with learning the basic rules of the real world, and how to process human language. (One of the notable things is that American children exposed to a real human speaking Chinese to them on a regular basis were able to differentiate the sounds of Chinese as well as Chinese kids; those in control groups exposed to video of people speaking Chinese didn't fare any better than regular American kids.)
I feel like the awesome and mysterious stuff going on in the child's mind at that age in order to come to grips with the real world, in its awesome complexity, is too important to be displaced by addictive recreational activities that can just as well come later. I don't want them to become masters of the small and limited worlds in which games exist, at the expense of a diminished mastery of the intricacies and awesome breadth of the actual world we live in.
> don't any other people here think 2-year-old kids shouldn't be playing iPad games at all?
I'd be surprised if there were (m)any people who think a 2 year-old should not use an iPad "at all".
I guess the jury is still out since my children are 6 and 22 months but so far the iPad seems like a spectacular device for them...certainly better than books. My son has been playing memory games, alphabet, numbers, spanish, songs, angry birds, plants v zombies, drawing, facetime, pattern matching, etc, etc, etc. I'm not sure how this is going to end up badly.
We don't have a TV in our house, but we do have iPads. I would argue that an iPad is a much better TV - given the right app, it can really help a child sit down, focus, and learn things under their own steam, without that Brave New World programming that comes from most TV sets.
Its a matter of balance, though. My kids get tons of time with the blocks and marbles (we play "kügel-bahn" like mad in our Austrian household - a form of "real-world" Marble Madness) but then we're also partial to a little Pacman now and then. The kids love both options, but given the choice, and if the sun is shining, they'd much rather be outside kicking dirt and climbing trees. The point is: engage your kids, and don't ever leave them alone watching TV. That is pure evil.
it can really help a child sit down, focus, and learn things under their own steam, without that Brave New World programming that comes from most TV sets.
2 is too young to be doing it regularly, but once in a while is fine. It's the passivity, the two-dimensionality, setting them up with a need for constant entertainment.
Also, let's not pretend it's ok because it's educational. Everything is educational when you're 2. You get a better education making a salad chopping cucumber and carrots with a crinkle cutter than playing an iPad game.
My two-year old loves to push buttons. Remote controls, toys, any buttons with some feedback (and many without) are fair game. On iPad/iPhone, spends as much time on any typing app watching letters appear as he does on a game (only tried a game or two). Trickiest bit really is getting him out of whatever menu he wanders into - author was dead-on there.
TV he'll watch for 10-15 minutes and wander/play with something else, sometimes glancing up when something catches his attention.
I'm with you that with either device these are doses of 15-20 minutes not "babysitting." But "at all" is extreme.
Spot on observations. Your mother did it right. Do the same thing for your child.
We do something similar with our 20-mo old. We're less hardcore about the TV^WNetflix thing than your mother. If he wants to watch Eeebee or Old MacDonanld he tells us and we let him (within reason).
About 4 weeks ago, he learned to play with Duplo building blocks (which we've had for several months), and he almost never asks to watch TV now. We estimate he used to watch about 6 hrs/week before.
The iPad is just a tool. It depends on how you use it.
My personal experience (Android Tablet user/iPod touch user) here.
a) The iPod touch keeps my daughter occupied whilst we are waitig for food. Do I really want my 3 year old daughter getting restless in restaurant and annoying everyone else? The parameters are set such that i) iPod touch usage stops once the food arrives and ii) Drawing only (because there is no sound). It allows her to explore her creativity
b) Flash cards - My 3 year old plays this on her own and learns how to spell through this
c) Photo albums on the iPod touch - She proudly takes her own pictures and has a great time relating her pictures and experience to other people. IMHO, this is great way for her to open up her otherwise shy nature
d) Learning the motion of writing letters and numbers even before she can hold a pencil properly
e) Nursery Rhymes on the iPod touch. She loves it
There are no-no of course. Some of them are
a) No TV shows on the iPod touch
b) No games on the iPod touch (except Angry Birds, which is for the father's entertainment)
c) No pop music
OK, let me help you with my personal case related to this:
I have two handicapped children. One of whom is severely handicapped and even at age 18 has a mental age of around 6. I would make every argument given in this article and then some. The most "fun" I've had with an iPad is when she was placed recently in a group home and I had to protect it against all sorts of things she accidentally does, as well as underpaid staffers (not my decision there by the way) who may well want to play with it when she's at school.
Other "child" is around 20 and mainly has the issues you would normally associate with Tourette's. Guess how many of these arguments still hold water given his problems with fine motor control and tendency to react based on impulse?
Now I think that shows that whether you feel a 2 year old should use an iPad (and regardless of whether you think they should they probably will), I think the article makes a case that certainly expands well to anyone with usability limitations.
We recently implemented a policy for my 6 year old that consists of "you may watch 30 minutes of TV per day for each book [of unspecified length] that you read that day."
So far he hasn't started reading more books, but he's started playing outside / imaginatively more. Even though it didn't have 100% the desired effect, I love the outcome still.
You are over generalizing by blaming an entire medium. There is very appropriate content for children on iPad and on TV and there is very inappropriate content for children in some books.
Granted, the nature of the medium plays a role, there is probably a much higher likelihood of bad / non-stimulating content on TV than in books. However, given that the iPad can act as a book, it logically follows it should have good content as well.
> I'm convinced that watching TV is harmful to a child's intellectual development
Is the TV having a negative impact? Or is the child just suffering because they arent having a positive impact from other experiences? I think an hour or so in front of a good educational (in the broad sense) TV show, game or iPad app could be great, but repeated days with no other stimulation/interaction is the real problem.
I'm thinking my kids won't use any tech until they can read. What good does it do them otherwise, anyway? As a toy for a few minutes, perhaps. I think people use tv/ipad/etc as a way to avoid having to interact with their kids for long periods of time. That's how it works for a lot of people I know.
Time spent on an iPad by a 2-4 year old is time spent not learning more important things.
Do you think it's okay to read picture books with your 2 year old child, or use other simple interactive devices like a See 'n Say [0]? If not, why? If so, what distinction do you see between those and supervised iPad usage? It's not like a 2 year old is going to be using the iPad unsupervised and accidentally browsing to inappropriate material as is possible with unsupervised TV viewing.
Similar story, my 14 month old mocks everything we do. If I knock on a door, he knocks on the door, if I sneeze, he'll try to make a sneeze sound, if I fold laundry, well...he'll unfold it and scatter it on the floor, but you get the idea. But since we use the phone, he wants to use the phone, there's no avoiding it.
I don't see the big issue, it's something in his environment that he's curious about. It's not a direct physical danger, I let him explore it.
When we developed Aeir Talk, an speech pathology app for children with Autism, we locked the setup screen (where parents can customize the cards, pictures, and audio) behind a nondescript "Setup" button in the title bar. When tapped, it does practically nothing: It changes to describe to parents how they can unlock the setup screen: "Press While Holding 'Please'", referring to a button on the other side of the screen that is part of the apps regular function. Compared to other touchable elements in the app, the button provides very little feedback, so kids largely ignore it. The gesture requires two hands, tapping two parts of the screen at the same time, so it's unlikely for children to end up in there by accident. You can see a video of this workflow at http://aeirtalk.com/ .
I did something similar with KType (an iPad app to help people with speech and motor disabilities communicate better). To get out of the app's main feature - full-screen keyboard - you have to hold the four corners of the iPad screen at the same time. It makes sure the user does not inadvertently get out of the keyboard view.
I think in app purchases for apps targeting users under 13 is a really bad idea. Even if there isn't some dark premise behind it, I feel like an asshole every time I tell my son "no" I wont buy you extra {whatever} for your game at just 2.99. Kids games should be reasonably priced(0-5 dollars) and not monetize with ads or upsells.
Sorry how is that even remotely reasonably priced? It has a limited market, that can't buy their product, that is hard to make engaging and appropriate. Either be willing to pay $15 a pop, be willing to accept in product advertising, in product upselling, are really basic (ie non custom story book artwork), or that they shouldn't exist at all. Frankly, sounds like you are asking just too much.
15$ for quality product is ok. Chaptered games/applications (iWork etc.) are ok. ADs are not. IAPs are not.
This should be tattooed on every single iOS dev.
PS: I actually wish there would be at least few 30-60$ games in the store. And not those crappy ports of gamepad/mouse games (shooters etc.) with unplayable controls. Or some good, but very old, not so polished ports of ports of classic games (FFT). It would be nice to play some great western RPG, with interesting story (not that boring save the world stuff), it should be turn based to adjust to device controls, some good graphics (not like those Top games from store) - look up Bastion on the PC, THIS is how AAA iPad games should look like.
And no sequels. Please.
I don't think there is anything insidious when you are targeting the potential phone owner. However a 4 and a half year old playing my phone feels differently about in app purchasing and has little concept of money and value.
I LOVE the points made in this post. I would two other observations:
1) Make sure your app has lightening fast response for touch events.
Kids are smart, they expect that when they click a button, something should happen. If it takes over 250ms, my kid thinks it's broke and will start clicking it repeatedly.
2) Always use "onTouchDown" instead of "onTouchUp" when handling simple presses.
My kid doesn't always release his finger after touching a button and when nothing happens, he thinks he needs to touch the button repeatedly. If the developers targeted the "Touch Down" event instead of "Touch Up" my kid wouldn't have learned this behavior.
I actually had to get a refund from Apple for an in-app purchase my son made while using Talking Tom Cat (I since deleted that app and turned off in-app purchases).
I've got two kids and what I would add to the observations listed in this article are as follows (these apply to any app that is intended for kids, but also apps where a significant section of the userbase might be kids - for example, my four-year-old is quite adept at Plants vs. Zombies, and given the depth of strategy utilized in that game I don't feel bad when he plays it):
1. No part of the application should require that you can read in order to use it or navigate it.
2. Don't pop up dialogs that a child cannot understand. For example, I watched as my child, while using an app intended for children, pressed "OK" on a dialog that asked if he wanted to turn on push notifications. That's just ridiculous! He'll press "OK" on any dialog because he just wants it to go away.
3. This really applies to all applications, but it becomes very apparent when watching a child use an app: the most desirable menu items should be larger and/or differently coloured than the least desirable ones. I.e. "Play" should be a big, brightly coloured button, while "Settings" should be small and tucked away.
4. Don't make it easy to do destructive things like delete accounts. This might seem obvious, but I have more than once opened an app only to find that my progress in it had vanished because my child had deleted my account (Plants vs. Zombies makes this too easy, for example).
5. On any app that has the potential to be enjoyed by both kids and adults, consider providing a kid-friendly mode that makes the game easier.
6. I don't know how difficult this is from a development perspective, but if possible, make the app resistant to having non-active fingers touching the screen while active fingers are attempting to use it. Kids will often grasp devices, especially phones, in such a way that fingers from (say) their left hand are touching the screen, and on some apps this causes them to cease responding to touch events from their other (right) hand.
7. If your app produces revenue through advertising, it probably shouldn't be marketed at young kids. Kids will press on the advertising and will just get frustrated when they arrive on a webpage somewhere, and adults will eventually delete the app because we don't want our kids feeling frustrated.
If I can't buy it or get it free without ads, it doesn't go on the iPad (I test with my iPhone if I'm unsure), and thus my kid isn't exposed to it (device is locked down tight to prevent purchases/etc, and I sync the apps on there after they've been reviewed by me).
> 6. I don't know how difficult this is from a development perspective, but if possible, make the app resistant to having non-active fingers touching the screen while active fingers are attempting to use it. Kids will often grasp devices, especially phones, in such a way that fingers from (say) their left hand are touching the screen, and on some apps this causes them to cease responding to touch events from their other (right) hand.
To get at the "raw" multitouch taps and gestures programmatically in a custom manner is complex to handle a case where the user is going to be "resting" fingers in a random area of the screen intermittently or for an extended period of time (i.e., a continuous gesture).
One solution is to put nothing interactive in that area (effectively ignore all taps / gestures), and that's quite easy to implement. I haven't used many apps targeted to children, so I don't know whether that's realistic from a user perspective.
With my diary app Remembary, I occasionally get empty emails submitted from the app's "Support Email" button in the help popover. The "?" button, the "Support Email" button, and the popup email's "Send" button are all in the top right part of the screen, so my best guess is that it's people's children tapping repeatedly in the top right area of the iPad. Good thing I don't have anything particularly destructive up there.
So thinking "what about the children?" is a good idea when doing any kind of app layout. It's good to make sure that repeatedly tapping or clicking on one part of the screen doesn't trigger deletions or other dangerous side effects.
In my case, it's nice to get an email every so often that doesn't have any calls to action in it.
Occasionally? I get over 100 empty emails a day with nothing in them. I guess people get confused about the discard button, because my apps are not targeted at kids. Over 70% of my emails are empty. Maybe a small puzzle before you can send me a message is in order.
Re: Point 4: " Don't make it easy to do destructive things like delete accounts."
This has happened with our toddlers deleting our gaming progress, and is very annoying.
Requiring a word to be typed for confirmation is a great way to lessen the chances of this happening. For example, in World of Warcraft you have to type in the letters D E L E T E and press Enter (or click the button) before you can delete your character.
#2 may be difficult for certain uses, since it's the system that displays the pop-up notification for push notification. But I agree it should be removed if possible.
#6 can be done with how multitouch is handled, like the wrist guard feature in note taking apps like penultimate. In most cases, just allow multitouch interactions with objects on screen.
#7, question for parents: what's the monetization policy that would work for you?
- one free app from the developer, all others cost money
- free app with in-app purchases, tucked away somewhere for parents
- no "sample" app, all apps cost money
> what's the monetization policy that would work for you?
Just make a paid app - it's that simple. I won't hesitate to put down 99 cents, or $1.99, or $2.99, for an app that my child will get enjoyment out of, especially if it has some learning value.
Speaking of learning value, I think a more sophisticated approach to learning would be useful. For example, the standard approach is to make the game involve numbers or letters, but I find my child gets bored with these. But he's fascinated with strategy games, so a tower defense game built for kids would be perfect for him. He'll just play it for fun but he'll be learning how to strategize, how to plan, how to react to changing situations, how to choose between different options, etc.
If your app for children includes in-app purchases I will delete it as soon as I realise. At present this is just a frustration for my 2 year old as he doesnt understand why the game is no longer on the screen, but as he gets older he is more likely to try and pester me into buying. Not Going To Happen, plus I will leave a 1 star review of your app based on in app purchases alone.
iPads and iPhones are not bought by children, they are ocassionally givent o children to use for a while, as such apps should not seek to bill parents because their kids pushed the worng button or I gave them the iPad too soon after downloading a new app (and thus entering the password).
This is an advantage of the android style permission system in this case, the 'Services that Cost you Money' section could reveal this dodgy behavior quite easily.
You leave a 1-star review because you can't be bothered to do some research ahead of time? Or did you assume that a free app, that otherwise was of decent quality, should really be free and the developer should be making content for you and your kid just for the love of it?
In app purchase is a great way to let the user try the app before buying it. And there's a way to do it in kid apps that isn't unethical or taking advantage. I shudder to think of all the developers you hurt because you can't be trusted to use your ipad properly.
This is called "natural selection". You are currently observing an app-store customer in the wild, seeing its habits and preferences. You can't get another, domestic, customer because they die out in the cages from severe ADs overdose, so you are left with only two choices:
1. Do nothing new;
2. Learn how to interact with existing, wild, customer population, who, oh blasphemy!, doesn't like IAPs.
Look if a game is marketed to and aimed at children then it should not have in-app purchases as kids will usually not have the means to pay for these purchases. I happily pay for apps and dont rely ont he free versions but if i have paid for an app and it includes in-app purchases and it is a kids app, then screw your unethical business.
I have a rule of giving 1 star rating to any kid's game that has them regardless of how well it's done and if my kids actually enjoy the non-gimmicky part. Milking parents by making their kids beg and nag them is an unethical way to earn money.
> Milking parents by making their kids beg and nag them is an unethical way to earn money.
I believe that the primary way the market for children's toys and goods works, if you watch The Corporation they interview a psychologist that explicitly helps exploit this behaviour. So, you might find it unethical, but its the norm and avoiding it is like shopping for clothes that used no-sweatshop labour.
What is wrong with people here? In app purchase doens't have to be gimmicky, and rating with 1 star just because it has iAP is ridiculous. What about kids games that can be expanded on with modules. Do you really want to buy 5 different apps, one for color minigames, one for shapes, etc? Especially when they can all be linked together in one app, holding the child's attention better and providing a better experience?
If the option for purchasing an extension stays out of the way, and doesn't just sit there begging to be clicked by those who click on everything, then and only then it's fine.
We have an app that is targeted at kids aged 3-5 (I don't work directly on it). It is currently in the top 10 free education apps and regularly holds a spot in the top 5 grossing education apps in the UK (we currently only have UK audio). It has an average rating of 4.5 stars, with over 100 genuine 5 star reviews from satisfied parents.
The app is split into 10 topics, with the first free. The rest can be unlocked for $13.99.
It uses in-app purchasing as providing the app for free with the first section available to all is the best way we can show off our product. It isn't targeted at the kid, it is aimed at the parent of the child. In no way do we try and trick anyone into a purchase.
This approach has been overwhelmingly successful.
I honestly think the app would've got nowhere if we'd stuck it up there as a paid app for $13.99. We could have gone for separate apps, but that's much harder to maintain and market (trust me - the product I work on has over 100 versions on the app store, we're migrating to 1 with iAP).
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I'm convinced that watching TV is harmful to a child's intellectual development. (And there's an established body of evidence to support that.)
As a kid, I hated my hippie Montessori teacher mom for allowing me only one hour of TV per week as a kid in the late 70s and early 80s (elementary school; I usually chose the Duke boys, and later Knight Rider). But, as an adult, I cite it often as one of the things I admire most about the way she raised me (no limits on books, nor daytime outdoor play after school, nor building things), especially after coming to understand how much easier it is to set a precocious and hyper wild little monkey in front of the boob tube so the parents can get a couple hours of peace.
I do think video games (especially good ones) are probably much less harmful than TV, and that they do even have some net positives for the user, in terms of developing various human abilities (cognitive and otherwise). But isn't two years old too young? Shouldn't kids of that age, instead of learning in-game physics, be learning real physics? Like with balls, marbles, and blocks, running and falling down, and not with animated honeypots and flying unicorns?
My own kid won't be here for a few more months, so I'm not preaching; just honestly asking. I know little kids love iPad games... but they love eating sugar cubes, too.
You are in fact preaching, just not from direct experience raising children.
Please do not give your future 2-year-old marbles to learn physics with. Choking hazard. Harder to swallow an iPad.
The hard part I find is letting them hurt themselves as part of their learning.
Indeed our 2 year-old just used a kitchen knife (about as long as his forearm) for the first time a couple of weeks ago to chop the potatoes he peeled. Close supervision.
"He could swallow a marble", well yes, he could bash his brother's head in with the corner of an iPad, get hit by a meteorite, run in to a wall, drown himself in the toilet, etc..
If you supervise your children, they won't swallow marbles or anything else. There are many vendors of wood toys (usually European) that are meant for small children. An ipad, is in the same realm as TV -- not meant for small kids.
You're aware that they put CHOKING HAZARD labels on things not because those things should be kept away from children at all times, but to alert inattentive parents to supervise their children?
The CHOKING HAZARD is not an intrinsic property of the object, but rather of the situation.
I don't care if I get down voted but this made me laugh so hard.
Further there is a lot more to the iPad than simply "video games". For example, my daughter loves looking at pictures. Both of herself and her friends, but also of her grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, people whom she only sees a few times year and so the photos are the main way she has to remember them between visits. And even the "video games" are genuinely educational, teaching things like shape matching, colours, the names of animals and so on.
Then there is the "selfish" aspect. After 3 hours running around the playground followed by an hour of playing the build-a-tower-of-blocks-and-knock-them-down game I want a few minutes to enjoy the luxuries of life, like going to the bathroom by myself or drinking a cup of coffee without someone trying to spill it, and the iPad is a good way to distract her for those precious minutes.
There's a wide range of activities on the iPad, going from plain video games to pure learning bits (letters, sounds, cooking, 3d moves etc) which makes it much more interesting than only "video games" IMO (and this generates a lot of discussions centered around learning too!).
On the frequency of use: it's pretty much like email for adults. You have to learn when to stop and when to do something else, learn to keep a balance.
At first we had small cards (like 2 x 10mn and 1 x 20mn for each day) to ensure he would not spend more time than we thought was good for him.
Now he mostly plays at his own rhythm, and tend to say at some point: "Dad, I played a lot on the iPad, now I need to take some fresh air".
Apart from that, all the remaining signs (learning to write, space placement, handling legos, social exchanges, sport etc) show no "damages" caused by the iPad :)
In conclusion: for me balance is everything (but like for most subjects); and there's a lot of good things to pick in the iPad.
I concede your point that the iPad can stretch/blur the notion of what a "game" is, in interesting ways. Although I am inclined to limit my kids' "screen time" (to zero, at two years old), I would never choose to limit my kids' "book time",.
But perhaps my thinking about it is too coarse, since iPad apps can be hybrids of both, or combine their attributes into something completely new.
Perhaps I will try out your time ticket idea and see how it goes. (But not from 2 years old... maybe 3 or 4.)
There might be evidence that early exposure to television, before the child's neurological development is ready to deal with it, is harmful. But I'm not aware of "an established body of evidence" proving that TV is harmful. Do you have sources? I'm very interested in seeing such sources, as I used to be under the impression that TV is harmful, but I am now convinced otherwise.
Be careful ignoring the scientific method here. You are equating a fear of bad side effects from TV with bad side effects with iPad use. Fear is not the scientific method.
There are many dimensions to consider when evaluating harm. For example, in early childhood development, the child desperately wants to imitate the adult (or role model), and will suffer certain side effects (e.g., problems with self confidence) if forbidden to imitate. Thus even if there is harm in using the iPad, there could easily be more harm in forbidding its use (but this can easily be remedied by never allowing the child to see the adult using the iPad).
I urge you to be careful about following any lines of parenting that mold the child (e.g., the child should be outside playing ball, not inside doing X). I see parents force their kids to conform with preset ideas of how a child should be, ignoring how early child development works, and thus cause pscyhological harm (e.g., internalization of fear of the parent). An analogy would be the parent teaching the child how to walk by grabbing the kid's legs and moving them in micro-adjustments; the kid will end up with poor motor control.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/128/5/1040.abs...
The problem with TV in particular seems to be the lack of interactivity. Children learn best by getting meaningful feedback from other people, and television cannot provide that. iPad apps and computers should be able to overcome that limitation, but I think we're early in the process of understanding the most effective ways to provide that for children, especially young children.
2 yr olds can't pull the key caps off of them.
(unlike, say, macbook pros.)
So, I've got three, from 2.5 to 7.5. They've seen mommy and daddy working with computers and ipads all their life. (well, ipads for the last 2 years). No tv. Minimal netflix. A little screen time for other stuff, maybe a couple hours a week. Their latest thing is downloading lego instructions and reviewing them to see how stuff goes together, and to see if they have enough parts to build some of the sets we haven't bought.
The third one has gotten a lot more screen time than the other two at their ages, just because he's got to do what the big boys are doing. He's only twigged on to what a mouse does in the last couple of months, because the ipad is so much more direct. If the touch screen doesn't work, then it's a broken computer. It's strange seeing that distinction so differently between the kids, as the older ones didn't get the whole touch screen thing till they were much older.
There's a lot of interesting observations you can make about UI when you're watching someone with a much different POV than you have.
Maybe he won't be the next Steve Jobs because of it.
But what has been interesting is that recently, he is much less interested in TV and video games and far more interested in physical world gaming with his peers: Bey Blades, Pokemon, Yugioh, and in particular Warhammer. He's been buying figures, paints and brushes not the latest version of Madden with his money.
Keep in mind that it was easier for your mother to do what she did than it is to do something similar today - kids programming wasn't available on 13 channels 24x365 and it was considered inappropriate to market to children in the way that is now standard [see Juliet Schor's Born to Buy: http://www.amazon.com/Born-Buy-Commercialized-Consumer-Cultu...]
Is there? I dislike children being raised by television as much as the next guy, but the chapter in Freakonomics on child development says there's no correlation between children's test scores and the amount of television they watch, according to the data from ECLS (http://nces.ed.gov/ecls/).
(edited to correct typo)
Of course, anecdote != data, so meh. But I do have a hunch that TV and social media both breed a passive consumption habit that can be hard to detect and even harder to get rid of.
Playing games may not seem productive, but the types of games children play do prepare them for more complex challenges later in life, and if anything I think computers will become more important over time. So, I suspect spending a few hours a week banging on an iPad is probably more useful than harmful for the average 2 year old.
Imagine what happens then: The whole app moves up, down or worst, sideways and switches to another app altogether. This interrupts the experience and is very confusing. I've seen this first hand. It is truly perplexing for children in the 2 to 7 year old range.
Another side-effect is that this makes it nearly impossible to write apps that actually encourage the little ones to fully engage and plant their paws on the device. Without turning off multi-touch gestures the app won't be good for more than three seconds of use. What's worst is that you also stand a good chance to get negative reviews on the app store from frustrated parents who don't understand that this is not the developer's fault.
Imagine the thrill of driving around town while your kids is playing with the iPad in the back seat and complaining/whining/crying every thirty seconds because he/she accidentally switched from the nice educational app you had them play with to your Facebook page due to accidentally using the app switching gesture. Brilliant.
While multi-touch gestures might be a good idea (I as an adult never use them) they provide no way for developers to disable them within their app, thus causing usability problems for kids (and probably some use cases with people with motor impediments).
Yes, the user can disable multi-touch altogether from settings. As an app developer you have to decide whether or not you want to put up a notice, warning or info page on your app warning parents about this problem and recommending that they disable multi-touch. Might you incur Apple's wrath for doing so? Don't know.
I've seen an app on startup recommend turning them off if they're on. (Which doesn't mean that Apple considers that OK, of course, just that the reviewer of that one app did.)
Ouch. I hadn't even thought of that.
I was just going to say it's ridiculous that you have this powerful device with advanced touch screen and you're developing software for it, but Apple prevents you from simply exerting control over the device.
A non-crippled OS should give you near exclusive access with minimal meddling, like Desktop PC games. Full screen, raw touch data and no accidental gestures.
I don't understand why hackers could abide by this.
(the next part is a bit off topic btw, but maybe some professional iOS app devs can shed some light on the matter for me?)
I work with kids (a bit older, ages 8-12) teach them to do creative things on the computer (GameMaker, GIMP, some HTML, etc). I'm still working to figure out a good method to learn them actual code (not all, but some are definitely smart enough). A lot of them ask me if I can teach them "how to make apps". I don't know (don't have a smartphone or tablet), but at some point I thought ok let's figure that out.
The kid had an iPod Touch so we started looking around for some iOS SDK or whatever (I feared writing a whole app would be too large of a project for him, but now I wanted to know and it taught us both a valuable lesson).
Can anyone who writes iOS apps maybe confirm this for me, because it seems pretty much impossible:
- You can't actually load an app that you just coded onto your own device, to try it out. Instead you can only test it in an emulator.
- The only way to get the new app onto the actual device is via the AppStore. Is that really true? Do even professional app developers not see their app run on an actual device instead of the emulator before the app is in a suitable state (as judged from the emulator tests) to place on the AppStore and even then only if they or someone buys it? Really?
- This SDK/emulator kit is only available for the Mac. So if you don't own a Mac, you can't develop iOS apps.
- Money. Does the SDK/emulator kit cost money or not? I couldn't figure it out because I stopped looking as soon as I saw it was Mac-only, anyway. But depending on which route I took through the Apple ID developer program website, it alternatively told me it was free and that it cost me $100. And then to be able to place the program onto a physical device I own, I need to pay a yearly $100 for the AppStore?
(I probably got some details wrong here and maybe I missed some programs or ways to do things so please correct me)
The centre I work at is mostly run by volunteers and doesn't use Macs or has $100/yr to give to Apple for the "privilege" of teaching a new generation of hacker kids how to develop applications for their petty locked up hardware/software universe. So there won't be any "how to make apps for iOS" lessons in the foreseeable future.
That's what I learned. And the kid that joined me on this wild goose chase learned that he most definitely will be getting an Android as his next smartphone.
There's a good TED talk where they go into the differences in language processing in a child of 12 months vs 15 months. Infants and very young children are doing so fucking much to deal with learning the basic rules of the real world, and how to process human language. (One of the notable things is that American children exposed to a real human speaking Chinese to them on a regular basis were able to differentiate the sounds of Chinese as well as Chinese kids; those in control groups exposed to video of people speaking Chinese didn't fare any better than regular American kids.)
I feel like the awesome and mysterious stuff going on in the child's mind at that age in order to come to grips with the real world, in its awesome complexity, is too important to be displaced by addictive recreational activities that can just as well come later. I don't want them to become masters of the small and limited worlds in which games exist, at the expense of a diminished mastery of the intricacies and awesome breadth of the actual world we live in.
I'd be surprised if there were (m)any people who think a 2 year-old should not use an iPad "at all".
I guess the jury is still out since my children are 6 and 22 months but so far the iPad seems like a spectacular device for them...certainly better than books. My son has been playing memory games, alphabet, numbers, spanish, songs, angry birds, plants v zombies, drawing, facetime, pattern matching, etc, etc, etc. I'm not sure how this is going to end up badly.
Its a matter of balance, though. My kids get tons of time with the blocks and marbles (we play "kügel-bahn" like mad in our Austrian household - a form of "real-world" Marble Madness) but then we're also partial to a little Pacman now and then. The kids love both options, but given the choice, and if the sun is shining, they'd much rather be outside kicking dirt and climbing trees. The point is: engage your kids, and don't ever leave them alone watching TV. That is pure evil.
Hyperfocus is a symptom of ADHD.
Also, let's not pretend it's ok because it's educational. Everything is educational when you're 2. You get a better education making a salad chopping cucumber and carrots with a crinkle cutter than playing an iPad game.
My kids are 11 and 8.
My son prepares tiramisus, sushis etc with us, and he watched the recipes on the iPad :)
Then I definitely agree on the "constant entertainment" point: I'm doing my best to ensure he knows to "do nothing" a bit each day.
Over-stimulating is something I'm very careful about!
My two-year old loves to push buttons. Remote controls, toys, any buttons with some feedback (and many without) are fair game. On iPad/iPhone, spends as much time on any typing app watching letters appear as he does on a game (only tried a game or two). Trickiest bit really is getting him out of whatever menu he wanders into - author was dead-on there.
TV he'll watch for 10-15 minutes and wander/play with something else, sometimes glancing up when something catches his attention.
I'm with you that with either device these are doses of 15-20 minutes not "babysitting." But "at all" is extreme.
We do something similar with our 20-mo old. We're less hardcore about the TV^WNetflix thing than your mother. If he wants to watch Eeebee or Old MacDonanld he tells us and we let him (within reason).
About 4 weeks ago, he learned to play with Duplo building blocks (which we've had for several months), and he almost never asks to watch TV now. We estimate he used to watch about 6 hrs/week before.
My personal experience (Android Tablet user/iPod touch user) here.
a) The iPod touch keeps my daughter occupied whilst we are waitig for food. Do I really want my 3 year old daughter getting restless in restaurant and annoying everyone else? The parameters are set such that i) iPod touch usage stops once the food arrives and ii) Drawing only (because there is no sound). It allows her to explore her creativity
b) Flash cards - My 3 year old plays this on her own and learns how to spell through this
c) Photo albums on the iPod touch - She proudly takes her own pictures and has a great time relating her pictures and experience to other people. IMHO, this is great way for her to open up her otherwise shy nature
d) Learning the motion of writing letters and numbers even before she can hold a pencil properly
e) Nursery Rhymes on the iPod touch. She loves it
There are no-no of course. Some of them are a) No TV shows on the iPod touch b) No games on the iPod touch (except Angry Birds, which is for the father's entertainment) c) No pop music
I have two handicapped children. One of whom is severely handicapped and even at age 18 has a mental age of around 6. I would make every argument given in this article and then some. The most "fun" I've had with an iPad is when she was placed recently in a group home and I had to protect it against all sorts of things she accidentally does, as well as underpaid staffers (not my decision there by the way) who may well want to play with it when she's at school.
Other "child" is around 20 and mainly has the issues you would normally associate with Tourette's. Guess how many of these arguments still hold water given his problems with fine motor control and tendency to react based on impulse?
Now I think that shows that whether you feel a 2 year old should use an iPad (and regardless of whether you think they should they probably will), I think the article makes a case that certainly expands well to anyone with usability limitations.
So far he hasn't started reading more books, but he's started playing outside / imaginatively more. Even though it didn't have 100% the desired effect, I love the outcome still.
Granted, the nature of the medium plays a role, there is probably a much higher likelihood of bad / non-stimulating content on TV than in books. However, given that the iPad can act as a book, it logically follows it should have good content as well.
Is the TV having a negative impact? Or is the child just suffering because they arent having a positive impact from other experiences? I think an hour or so in front of a good educational (in the broad sense) TV show, game or iPad app could be great, but repeated days with no other stimulation/interaction is the real problem.
Time spent on an iPad by a 2-4 year old is time spent not learning more important things.
[0] Those circular toys that play animal sounds. http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=10&e=sandslanding
We let her play with pictures and she LOVES the xylophone app along with the Piano app.
I think you will find it much different reality than you actually think.
I don't see the big issue, it's something in his environment that he's curious about. It's not a direct physical danger, I let him explore it.
I built one of such apps (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/toddler-trainer-hd/id49632353...) and took extra care to tuck away all menus and settings in a triple-clicked menu, so toddlers can't access it.
Interesting article and suggestions. I'll have to incorporate a few of the ideas.
I don't think there is any evidence to support that at all. Do you have a source?
This should be tattooed on every single iOS dev.
PS: I actually wish there would be at least few 30-60$ games in the store. And not those crappy ports of gamepad/mouse games (shooters etc.) with unplayable controls. Or some good, but very old, not so polished ports of ports of classic games (FFT). It would be nice to play some great western RPG, with interesting story (not that boring save the world stuff), it should be turn based to adjust to device controls, some good graphics (not like those Top games from store) - look up Bastion on the PC, THIS is how AAA iPad games should look like. And no sequels. Please.
1) Make sure your app has lightening fast response for touch events. Kids are smart, they expect that when they click a button, something should happen. If it takes over 250ms, my kid thinks it's broke and will start clicking it repeatedly.
2) Always use "onTouchDown" instead of "onTouchUp" when handling simple presses. My kid doesn't always release his finger after touching a button and when nothing happens, he thinks he needs to touch the button repeatedly. If the developers targeted the "Touch Down" event instead of "Touch Up" my kid wouldn't have learned this behavior.
I've got two kids and what I would add to the observations listed in this article are as follows (these apply to any app that is intended for kids, but also apps where a significant section of the userbase might be kids - for example, my four-year-old is quite adept at Plants vs. Zombies, and given the depth of strategy utilized in that game I don't feel bad when he plays it):
1. No part of the application should require that you can read in order to use it or navigate it.
2. Don't pop up dialogs that a child cannot understand. For example, I watched as my child, while using an app intended for children, pressed "OK" on a dialog that asked if he wanted to turn on push notifications. That's just ridiculous! He'll press "OK" on any dialog because he just wants it to go away.
3. This really applies to all applications, but it becomes very apparent when watching a child use an app: the most desirable menu items should be larger and/or differently coloured than the least desirable ones. I.e. "Play" should be a big, brightly coloured button, while "Settings" should be small and tucked away.
4. Don't make it easy to do destructive things like delete accounts. This might seem obvious, but I have more than once opened an app only to find that my progress in it had vanished because my child had deleted my account (Plants vs. Zombies makes this too easy, for example).
5. On any app that has the potential to be enjoyed by both kids and adults, consider providing a kid-friendly mode that makes the game easier.
6. I don't know how difficult this is from a development perspective, but if possible, make the app resistant to having non-active fingers touching the screen while active fingers are attempting to use it. Kids will often grasp devices, especially phones, in such a way that fingers from (say) their left hand are touching the screen, and on some apps this causes them to cease responding to touch events from their other (right) hand.
7. If your app produces revenue through advertising, it probably shouldn't be marketed at young kids. Kids will press on the advertising and will just get frustrated when they arrive on a webpage somewhere, and adults will eventually delete the app because we don't want our kids feeling frustrated.
I had a 7 year old recently ask me about dieting and weight-loss strategies because of an in-game "one weird trick to lose weight" ad.
If I can't buy it or get it free without ads, it doesn't go on the iPad (I test with my iPhone if I'm unsure), and thus my kid isn't exposed to it (device is locked down tight to prevent purchases/etc, and I sync the apps on there after they've been reviewed by me).
To get at the "raw" multitouch taps and gestures programmatically in a custom manner is complex to handle a case where the user is going to be "resting" fingers in a random area of the screen intermittently or for an extended period of time (i.e., a continuous gesture).
One solution is to put nothing interactive in that area (effectively ignore all taps / gestures), and that's quite easy to implement. I haven't used many apps targeted to children, so I don't know whether that's realistic from a user perspective.
So thinking "what about the children?" is a good idea when doing any kind of app layout. It's good to make sure that repeatedly tapping or clicking on one part of the screen doesn't trigger deletions or other dangerous side effects.
In my case, it's nice to get an email every so often that doesn't have any calls to action in it.
This has happened with our toddlers deleting our gaming progress, and is very annoying.
Requiring a word to be typed for confirmation is a great way to lessen the chances of this happening. For example, in World of Warcraft you have to type in the letters D E L E T E and press Enter (or click the button) before you can delete your character.
#2 may be difficult for certain uses, since it's the system that displays the pop-up notification for push notification. But I agree it should be removed if possible.
#6 can be done with how multitouch is handled, like the wrist guard feature in note taking apps like penultimate. In most cases, just allow multitouch interactions with objects on screen.
#7, question for parents: what's the monetization policy that would work for you? - one free app from the developer, all others cost money - free app with in-app purchases, tucked away somewhere for parents - no "sample" app, all apps cost money
Just make a paid app - it's that simple. I won't hesitate to put down 99 cents, or $1.99, or $2.99, for an app that my child will get enjoyment out of, especially if it has some learning value.
Speaking of learning value, I think a more sophisticated approach to learning would be useful. For example, the standard approach is to make the game involve numbers or letters, but I find my child gets bored with these. But he's fascinated with strategy games, so a tower defense game built for kids would be perfect for him. He'll just play it for fun but he'll be learning how to strategize, how to plan, how to react to changing situations, how to choose between different options, etc.
iPads and iPhones are not bought by children, they are ocassionally givent o children to use for a while, as such apps should not seek to bill parents because their kids pushed the worng button or I gave them the iPad too soon after downloading a new app (and thus entering the password).
In app purchase is a great way to let the user try the app before buying it. And there's a way to do it in kid apps that isn't unethical or taking advantage. I shudder to think of all the developers you hurt because you can't be trusted to use your ipad properly.
Your apps. Your choice.
I have a rule of giving 1 star rating to any kid's game that has them regardless of how well it's done and if my kids actually enjoy the non-gimmicky part. Milking parents by making their kids beg and nag them is an unethical way to earn money.
I believe that the primary way the market for children's toys and goods works, if you watch The Corporation they interview a psychologist that explicitly helps exploit this behaviour. So, you might find it unethical, but its the norm and avoiding it is like shopping for clothes that used no-sweatshop labour.
If he finds it unethical, it doesn't matter if it's the norm. He shouldn't do it. In both cases, there are clear and relatively easy alternatives.
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We have an app that is targeted at kids aged 3-5 (I don't work directly on it). It is currently in the top 10 free education apps and regularly holds a spot in the top 5 grossing education apps in the UK (we currently only have UK audio). It has an average rating of 4.5 stars, with over 100 genuine 5 star reviews from satisfied parents.
The app is split into 10 topics, with the first free. The rest can be unlocked for $13.99.
It uses in-app purchasing as providing the app for free with the first section available to all is the best way we can show off our product. It isn't targeted at the kid, it is aimed at the parent of the child. In no way do we try and trick anyone into a purchase.
This approach has been overwhelmingly successful.
I honestly think the app would've got nowhere if we'd stuck it up there as a paid app for $13.99. We could have gone for separate apps, but that's much harder to maintain and market (trust me - the product I work on has over 100 versions on the app store, we're migrating to 1 with iAP).