Kids’ Apps Are Crammed With Ads

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/30/style/kids-study-apps-advertising.html

by chablent • 8 years ago

495 399 8 years ago

nytimes.com

quickthrower22• 8 years ago

I can see why, babies are going to accidently click ads making more money for the developer.

taurath2• 8 years ago

So is the New York Times app, and I’m paying for it. Not much longer though - they’ve now got autoplaying video.

dawnerd• 8 years ago

Good luck trying to cancel. They’re pretty clingy... Expect to get spammed with “please come offers” every single day.

taurath2• 8 years ago

I’d gladly pay more if they offered an ad free experience. I’m fine telling them so over the phone.

Rjevski3• 8 years ago

Raise a dispute/chargeback with your card issuer. The only way to make them stop this bullshit is to hit them where it hurts and increase their dispute percentage to dangerous levels where their acquirer bank threatens to drop them.

mikestew• 8 years ago

The NYT app was one of the primary reasons I installed a Pi-Hole. According to my wife, it works on games, too. For $35 and a half hour of typing and progress bars, a Pi-Hole should be included in those take-home bags they give to new parents.

rvanmil• 8 years ago

There is a bigger problem here and that is a lot of parents either ignore or simply don’t see the problem. Friends think I’m weird because I carefully curate apps for my 3yo son and have banned youtube. This problem also exists on iOS but I don’t think it’s as bad as described in this article. I’ve realised quite a while ago that Google really doesn’t give a shit about your kids being confronted with inappropriate content.

r_singh5• 8 years ago

I'm only 24 and I'm already afraid of how I'll manage technology consumption once I have kids. Unfortunately your friends are naive, the problem you're trying to solve for your 3yo is one of most important problems parents are facing right now in the digital age (I believe it to be so big because most people like your friends aren't aware of the repercussions).

2muchcoffeeman• 8 years ago

YouTube is so incredibly shit house these days.

There are a few interesting channels, but otherwise I may as well be watching regular tv. The suggestions I get are also incredibly bad.

jmvoodoo• 8 years ago

My wife and I both have Andoid phones. Whenever we get a new device removing YouTube is the first thing we do. We have a small list of paid puzzle games we install. And for the limited video time the kids get PBS Video which is great. We don't let the kids watch Netflix or any other video apps because their "kids" programming is absolute garbage if not openly hostile toward children.

You're not weird.

move-on-by3• 8 years ago

I just installed PBS Video on my iPhone and opened up my pi-hole to see what types of DNS requests it was making. Among regular PBS domains are:

* 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.

[1] https://pbskids.org/privacy/

Cthulhu_5• 8 years ago

You should point the people that let their kids watch unrestricted youtube to the articles about the content farms, or the trolls or whoever making disturbing versions of children's shows, or those that go into the bizarrely disturbing - pregnant Elsa, spider-man, err. Stuff like that.

And else just make them watch finger family videos for hours.

Rainymood2• 8 years ago

"Free" is the ultimate pricing tool. No one can argue or make anything cheaper than free and those with audiences and ad revenue (Google, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram) already have the eyeballs to make free worth it. Smaller developers, studios, companies, can hardly compete with these apps because free always trumps paying, even if it's only $0.01.

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.

glenneroo• 8 years ago

I'm not sure I understand your point about big vs small companies. The article states:

"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".

Rainymood2• 8 years ago

Smaller and more frequent micro-transactions have been the norm rather than the exceptions. Micro-transaction and lootboxs, this is the world we live in. If we want to change it we have to vote with our wallets.

dnohr• 8 years ago

Airplane mode is the safest option for when our 3yo kiddo play games on the iPad. Unless the app is paid for, it most likely will be full of sketchy ways to make the kids press on ads.

StapleHorse• 8 years ago

This. It works and it is the only way I can run apps in my oldish tablet. If it's connected while running many apps it slows down to a crowl.

social_quotient• 8 years ago

I’m so glad this topic has come up. I have a young child with some apple devices. Apple has a feature where the child can request permission to download an app, I can approve or not. This is great... but it would be awesome if I could approve with “ads off”, I don’t mind taking the $$ hit on install. What infuriates me is finding out 3 days later that my kid is either being distracted non stop to an unplayable level with ads or trading eyeball time to watch in app videos in exchange for some monetary system to be used in game play.

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)

r_singh5• 8 years ago

Your comment makes me wish there was a way for parents to curate the appstore for their kids.

setquk2• 8 years ago

There is and I do it. I play the game the first time. If I’m not happy it gets removed.

dangwu• 8 years ago

A curated or crowded sourced app directory for ad-free games is a good idea! Would be a great weekend project for someone.

tiglionabbit• 8 years ago

Too many apps are like that.

What you want sounds a lot more like a normal game console.

kalleboo2• 8 years ago

Exactly. Buy a Nintendo DS

nitemice• 8 years ago

This problem isn't isolated to kids games though.

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.

jakobegger• 8 years ago

Yep, the app store really, really needs a section for games that are ad-free and that don't have any consumable in-app-purchases.

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?

saagarjha5• 8 years ago

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.

It’s not great, but you could look for Apple Design Award winners, which are usually ad-free.

Double_a_924• 8 years ago

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.

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.

fouc2• 8 years ago

Perhaps we need to consider if something is wrong about this culture of constant upgrades.

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.

bpizzi13• 8 years ago

Angry Birds was a really nice game

IMHO it was a really bad game.

However, to me again, it was a really nice piece of addicting software.

nkrisc2• 8 years ago

I think I still have the original Angry Birds game installed on a ~10 year old iPod touch I have laying around. I'll have to make sure to preserve that now, if it's impossible to get older versions of games like that.

secabeen2• 8 years ago

Amazon's Freetime unlimited store is entirely ad-free apps, and bans in-app purchases, from what I can tell. It's only available on Kindle Fire devices, but it's a good option. (I think a big part of that is that you pay $3/mo for access)

The versions of Angry Birds there are ad-free and in-app-purchase-free.

aidos• 8 years ago

It’s dreadful. I think Android is worse - though we only have an Android tablet and not an iPad. It’s virtually impossible to find a game for the kids that’s a) not loaded with ads and b) doesn’t want permission to your entire life to install it.

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.

icebraining3• 8 years ago

Android is fine, just use emulators :) Even a cheap phone like my Moto G can run everything up to and including N64 games. I'm sporadically replaying Super Mario 64 on my commute.

tombrossman• 8 years ago

Android apps that contain ads are clearly labelled in the Google Play Store. The text "Contains Ads" appears right at the top of each listing by the title. There is no such standard in Apple's App Store, and this could easily be remedied by Apple if they cared.

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.

IshKebab• 8 years ago

Yes that is definitely good but in practice 80% of apps contain ads (based on a quick check of the top 20 games I just did) and there's no way to search for only apps without ads.

Cthulhu_5• 8 years ago

Look outside the phone IMO, mobile games are mostly shit - I'm starting to think they're worse even than flash games of old. Get them a Nintendo DS instead, mostly kid-safe games, no ads, restricted or no internet connectivity, oh and the games are so much better.

ndnxhs2• 8 years ago

Flash games were made to be enjoyed. They may have been developed by inexperienced developers but at least they weren't trying to suck money out of you in every way possible.

beerlord• 8 years ago

The simplest solution to this problem is simply to buy a Nintendo Switch. You can control exactly which games are installed, and and rely on the fact that they are not exploitative.

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.

VLM4• 8 years ago

The standard switch game price of $60 (admittedly, everything seems to always be on sale) provides some insight into the economics of the free/99cent upfront mobile game revenue extraction model.

briffle• 8 years ago

amazon's 'freetime' for their kindle is close. No games in there have any additional cost or ads. the problem is, finding decent games/books/etc, targeted to your kids age. The search/navigation is pretty hit or miss.

antidaily• 8 years ago

Yes. It's infuriating to me that even some Apple's "Games we Love" are packed with ads and predatory buy-coins-to-unlock-things formats.

guelo• 8 years ago

Google Play “discloses whether an app has advertising or in-app purchases

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.

gpm2• 8 years ago

I don't install new apps often, but the last time I was looking for something the yalp store (Open source google play wrapper) could filter out things with ads or in app purchases.

kalleboo2• 8 years ago

In Europe, TV advertising to children is in often heavily regulated (sometimes even to zero). In addition, in many countries you have the option of the public broadcaster with no ads.

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?

r_singh5• 8 years ago

An an Indian, I'm grateful for the existence of the EU for advocating the more ethical path in regulating the ills that capitalism introduces inevitably.

samwillis2• 8 years ago

Yes, I have a 4yo and we only allow the BBC apps and videos, all ad free and mostly have an educational direction: https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/grownups/article-cbeebies-app...

radoslawc• 8 years ago

This might be unpopular opinion, but whatever happened with paper and crayons? Or Legos? I can understand how it can be tempting to have few quiet hours after work, giving your young ones tablet of phone to watch this specially crafted media to attract their attention (and show them ads as it turns out), but I don't believe it's healthy for young organism to stare blankly on screen 10 inches from face with worse possible head position (almost always bent forward). My friend said once, that she's so grateful for technology advancement, that she doesn't know how she would manage to change diapers without tablet.

watwut3• 8 years ago

Many kids don't like drawing. Drawing is not possible in many situations where tablet is possible. Ditto lego plus, there is not that much lego for under 5 years old.

You don't get few quiet hours of work with tablet. You might get peaceful car ride or waiting for doctor etc.

saagarjha5• 8 years ago

You can draw on a tablet…

radicalbyte• 8 years ago

Duplo is for smaller kids. My boy is just 5 and he has been building Lego Creator boxes on his own for the last six months.

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.

ricardobeat2• 8 years ago

They can have both. A touchscreen offers really interesting experiences you can’t get on paper, and there is plenty of good educational content.

hrktb• 8 years ago

That’s not unpopular, just unpractical.

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.

athenot2• 8 years ago

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.

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.

apexalpha4• 8 years ago

but I don't believe it's healthy for young organism to stare blankly on screen 10 inches from face with worse possible head position (almost always bent forward).

People used to say the same thing to me on my PlayStation 1. Relax, technology is a part of our lifes.

wilsonnb32• 8 years ago

Perhaps they were right.

ArrayList• 8 years ago

young organism

What the hell?

salvar4• 8 years ago

Why do you say "stare blankly"? My young organism stares anything but blankly at the iPad screen when he's allowed to use it.

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.

Draiken• 8 years ago

Saying that "some people" do it is a big understatement. The majority of parents do that in my personal experience.

Don't think I live in a bubble on that front, but perhaps there are researches on this that can prove me wrong.

watwut3• 8 years ago

Unpopular opinion: having some time on your own is important for your psycho-hygiene. Only few are able to keep calm without it and that affects interactions with kids too.

ohazi• 8 years ago

Instead of giving kids an iPad / Android device, what about giving them a lightweight Linux laptop / tablet so they can play games and watch YouTube with an ad blocker?

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.

saagarjha5• 8 years ago

Linux just doesn’t have the polish that an iPad does. There are very few, if any, games, and it’s not really a good fit for younger children.

TeMPOraL10• 8 years ago

Sounds like there's a need for a Linux distribution created by parents for parents. And also a curated list of ad-free videos and games for kids.

de_watcher• 8 years ago

It may be hard to operate the touchpad/keyboard for younger children, but there are tones of simple casual games on Steam. There is stuff with abstract themes or some specific neutral themes like gardening or cars.

SmellyGeekBoy5• 8 years ago

My Acorn Electron wasn't "a good fit for younger children" either. God forbid they start to learn how a computer actually works instead of watching hours of ads.

ndnxhs2• 8 years ago

The computer most of us had as a kid was a hell of a lot less polished than a modern Linux system.

Cthulhu_5• 8 years ago

Youtube with an ad blocker doesn't solve the problem - there's loads and loads of ads in regular videos now, as well as a ton of disturbing content. Youtube has promised to be better, hopefully they're manually curating content in the youtube kids app nowadays. Also youtube offers a premium service nowadays to remove ads (iirc).

imhoguy• 8 years ago

YT is a rabbit hole, even without ads. I prefer to curate and download content with youtube-dl to play it later with Kodi. Kids can get back to liked stuff at any time and don't get lost in another "suggested" video bait.

_amy• 8 years ago

Youtube ads are not the only problem. If you are not watching with the kids (and I assume few of us want to), they end up seeing questionable/scary content in minutes. The recommender system is a russian rulette.

whywhywhywhy4• 8 years ago

Once you sit them in front of YouTube it's already over.

josefresco4• 8 years ago

Kids use a Chromebook with an ad-blocker and we pay for YT premium which supposedly removes ads - although I still see plenty on YT TV. Our iPad has become a YouTube/Netflix appliance - app discovery is dead (or rather never existed for my kids)

wavewash• 8 years ago

We've recently released an app on iOS that has ads and is aimed at a younger audience. We have an option to remove the ads and it comes with an added ability to put a childlock on in app messaging. Later when we add a store into the app we will add features to lock it further because we want to do right by our customers who we hope include parents of kids.

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.

huhtenberg• 8 years ago

we want to do right by our customers

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.

ricardobeat2• 8 years ago

That’s not good enough - you’re just doing the same as everyone else. We just want to buy your apps upfront; I’ve gladly paid for many (ex Toca apps).

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.

teddyh• 8 years ago

We make more money from the ads than from purchases of ad removal.

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.

salvar4• 8 years ago

When one of the ads in your ad gets clicked, what do you think is the most likely reason? That a child was interested in the product and wanted to get more information before making a decision?

ObsoleteNerd2• 8 years ago

It's almost impossible to find good educational apps that aren't full of ads, dark UX patterns, in-app purchases, etc etc.

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.

hkmurakami2• 8 years ago

There were so many good ones in the early Mac days. I loved playing Outnumbered as a kid and it probably my helped me on a path to great comfort and memory for numbers decades later.

SmellyGeekBoy5• 8 years ago

It's almost impossible to find good apps that aren't full of ads, dark UX patterns, in-app purchases, etc etc.

Fixed that for you...

icebraining3• 8 years ago

F-Droid has plenty of good apps. It just might lack in specific categories, like educational.

whywhywhywhy4• 8 years ago

We really do need a new category in both app stores. Software for kids that you buy

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.

VLM4• 8 years ago

We're past the social era of computing and everything now is your

"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.

Can_Not2• 8 years ago

It's also leaking into the non-digital world.

claudiulodro• 8 years ago

I recommend the PBS Kids Games app. It has a ton of different educational games and no ads. It's available in the app store and on the website[1]. That's just about the best kids games app I've found.

[1] https://pbskids.org/games/

TaupeRanger2• 8 years ago

This really silly. Literally all Android games I've downloaded that are appropriate for my 3 year old are ad free (or very minimal "out of the way" ads for other stuff from the same company). Khan Academy Kids, the PBS Kids app, the Sago Mini games, etc. These are all fine.

protomyth4• 8 years ago

Question: If we sell an education math app that is a free download but limits the numbers (say 1 to 5) but has an in-app purchase to get the full range, is that acceptable?

Balgair2• 8 years ago

If we sell an education math app that is a free download... (emphasis mine)

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?

ObsoleteNerd2• 8 years ago

If buying it then means the transaction between us is over, and I get a fully working app with no ads, no popups asking to buy extra "coins" or anything, and my kid can play that app with no other interruptions or anything I need to be wary of, then yeah that sounds fine. Just sounds like a free trial/demo to me which is fair.

bpizzi13• 8 years ago

Father of two little guys of 7 & 5 here. Personal story below.

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.

hkmurakami2• 8 years ago

I really laud your approach and hope I can do something similar. What concerns me though is how the challenge will become magnified as children get exposed to their classmates' phones and other gadgets, etc. And you lose control of your environment. Have you thought about how you'd like to deal with the future challenges ahead?

bpizzi13• 8 years ago

It's concerning me too. I'm just going into it one step at a time ;)

zubspace• 8 years ago

What you need to keep in mind is that you can't control every aspect of your child's life as they grow older. For example friends and access to multimedia outside of your home.

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.

TeMPOraL10• 8 years ago

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!".

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.

bpizzi13• 8 years ago

I wonder if the kids ever asked you why companies are doing it?

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.

skrebbel5• 8 years ago

My company makes pluggable chat components. It's a pretty niche targeted product, and we run some Google ads on the relevant keywords.

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.

fouc2• 8 years ago

I guess this might be the first time I've heard of ads being described as a form of abuse. You are probably onto something there. Thanks

pure-awesome• 8 years ago

What exactly do you mean by "you don't generally have to fear strangers"?

andrewla3• 8 years ago

I've got to say, you're using a pretty wild definition of the word "abuse", as well as "hurting other people". How in the world does an ad hurt you?

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.

simias• 8 years ago

I think the vocabulary you use is a little too extreme but I agree with the general premise that ads are a generally a negative thing and we really should reconsider if we, as a society, should be so accepting of them.

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.

LiterallyDoge2• 8 years ago

I think this might be a case of "Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity." In that, these people literally just want your money, they don't care about helping or hurting you, for the most part, they just want to do business.

Now if you're saying "Children are not old enough to do business with shrewd adults." That's very fair.

TimJYoung• 8 years ago

Thank you for verbalizing something that has been on my mind a lot lately. We seemed to have reached this dystopian state where people will do all sorts of horrible things to others, but they do so with a smile on their face and we excuse the underlying behavior as "efficient" or use other forms of "market-speak" to explain away our treatment of one another. Frankly, I think it's a function of how large we've allowed our organizations (that govern our everyday lives) to become. Large organizations tend to be completely indifferent to the needs of individuals, and we need to start adopting a more proactive approach to breaking up organizations that become so big that they fail to properly serve their constituents anymore.

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...

softwarefounder• 8 years ago

The reason I hate ads is because it's a legitimized way of abuse, of hurting other people...

Everyone on this thread hates ads, but that's a stretch there bud.

sizzle3• 8 years ago

How do we stop this?

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?

antocv• 8 years ago

We do the same here, but there is no proprietary software, only FOSS.

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.

albertgoeswoof2• 8 years ago

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

JeanMarcS2• 8 years ago

My son was very proud of himself the day he showed me how the remote worked. Before that, the kids could only see tv if they asked my wife or me.

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.

SlowRobotAhead• 8 years ago

We do the same here, but there is no proprietary software, only FOSS.

Are you also vegan? ;)

p410n3• 8 years ago

For this same reason I like youtube Kids. Its...not as good as the OG youtube app, you cant really search for channels easily and all, but no ads is a godsend!

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

Plastikdusche• 8 years ago

Being able to block certain channels / videos is something I want to try out one day, well mainly just Blippi. We watch YouTube with our 3year old and it's near impossible to avoid his videos being suggested to you. While the content itself is fine, I feel like he crosses a line how bluntly he pushes his toys / videos on to his viewers. Along the lines of "go tell your parents, siblings, babysitters to download/ buy my stuff"

paulie_a• 8 years ago

I honestly like the concept of YouTube kids, but is there a way to disable the ads for it? I don't have kids. But I see ads for it constantly. You would think google would target their own ads for their services a little better.

philliphaydon3• 8 years ago

Ah why can't I favourite a comment. I just had a baby girl 2 weeks ago, and the wife and I agree to not having her on cellphone/tablet with games and such, becoming antisocial. When we have dinner, no phones, we sit and eat as a family. I really hate seeing kids on phones watching cartoons or playing games while at dinner.

fenomas• 8 years ago

FYI: clicking on the "47 minutes ago" bit of a comment header takes you to the comment page, which has a "favorite" link.

TeMPOraL10• 8 years ago

Ah why can't I favourite a comment.

You can. Click on the timestamp of that comment, and the "favourite" link will be there.

switch007• 8 years ago

Congratulations! And I wish you luck: the few new families I know all said no tablets/chocolate etc but succumbed. I don't judge them. Sleep deprivation and full time jobs make it very difficult to be a "perfect" parent.

mrhappyunhappy4• 8 years ago

My 1 year old watches Netflix kids singing show. I am not proud of it but it has been a life saver given how difficult he can be.

Cthulhu_5• 8 years ago

I'd be hesitant to give them an internet connected device for entertainment purposes; not when there's great and cheaper alternatives (smartphones / tablets are relatively expensive). I'm thinking a Nintendo console or handheld - I got a new 2DS, it's pretty great. Those new mini models are pretty neat too (nes, snes, playstation is coming out soon, n64 is sure to follow), although I dunno if kids these days would enjoy them as much as we did the original consoles.

TL;DR: Don't let your kids play free games or consume free content. There's always a catch.

bpizzi13• 8 years ago

Those new mini models are pretty neat too (nes, snes, playstation is coming out soon, n64 is sure to follow), although I dunno if kids these days would enjoy them as much as we did the original consoles.

My boys are loving Bomberman so much!

_pmf_2• 8 years ago

But they have to enter one command on the little Bluetooth keyboard (and they do!).

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).

majewsky• 8 years ago

It's probably more of a concession to the fact that in-app purchases is where the money is.

bspammer• 8 years ago

What age do you think is appropriate to introduce them to the internet? I'm sure at the moment you're pretty safe, but at some point your kids are gonna be introduced to it in IT classes at school, and by staying at friends' houses.

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.

bpizzi13• 8 years ago

What age do you think is appropriate to introduce them to the internet?

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".

JMiao• 8 years ago

my only game playing growing up happened during long vacations on a 386 machine where i had to learn dos, qbasic commands to make anything happen. got me wondering how my computer worked and what else it could do. a grateful inconvenience!

flurdy• 8 years ago

Father of primary school aged girls here.

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.

secabeen2• 8 years ago

Amazon freetime does a pretty good job of curating the apps that are available, even going to the level of getting custom versions of popular apps with the ads and social media features removed.

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.

simonh• 8 years ago

Our girls had an iPad mini each since they were 8 and 9. No real restrictions except occasional 'no devices' days and evenings, or, "you've played with that enough time to do something else". I get to approve all apps, but I've never actually found a reason to refuse one. A lot of the games they pay are ad supported.

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.

rm_-rf_slash• 8 years ago

A middle ground approach from my experience: whenever I would watch tv with my mother, back in the ancient era before Netflix, she would always, always mute the tv when the ads came on.

The ads were there, but we had that power over them.

gammateam• 8 years ago

just a matter of time until they realize all their friend's games are way more entertaining, if they haven't already

tick tock OP

bpizzi13• 8 years ago

until they realize all their friend's games are way more entertaining

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.

ptd2• 8 years ago

How do you control the content your children are exposed to once they go to school?

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.

teekert• 8 years ago

Well, that is a strange school, such a viewing would cause nationwide outrage if it happened in my country.

bpizzi13• 8 years ago

Has another commenter said, and I agree with him, as kids grows into teenage age, supporting and explaining is more efficient than controlling.

Rjevski3• 8 years ago

How do you control the content your children are exposed to once they go to 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!

MisterTea• 8 years ago

I hate to break it to you but children being exposed to "unsavory" things outside of parental supervision is part of growing up. It's called street smarts.

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.

gdubs• 8 years ago

It’s about the stages of brain development, and providing choice and education to kids at the level they’re ready for. The hope is that by the time they are exposed to things on their own, you’ve equipped them with the skills and habits they need to navigate the world.

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.

Mirioron8• 8 years ago

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.

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.

pwenzel• 8 years ago

Word. I like the idea of a desktop with no internet! What's the best offline encyclopedia in 2018 these days?

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).

gpm2• 8 years ago

What's the best offline encyclopedia in 2018 these days?

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.

Novashi• 8 years ago

I hope it doesn't turn south and they figure out how easy it is to use technology to exploit people and get money and then decide to go do that for a job.

rayiner• 8 years ago

Counter natrative. My daughter is 6. She has an iPad (wifi) and an iPhone 6+ (with cell service). She learned to use them herself, and tne only thing off limits are toy opening videos. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of brand names and all the backstory for the LOL dolla or whatever she is into these days. She also gets perfect grades (as they are in kindergarten), is active in gymnastics, has real life friends she plays outside with, etc.

ryandrake2• 8 years ago

Same here. I think the "no screens" hysteria of the day is a lot like the Dungeons and Dragons hysteria of the 80s, although I think ads are very dangerous to kids and to be avoided if at all possible. I talk about ads with my daughter, and explain to them what their purpose is, and how they're not appropriate to watch just like the scary stuff she doesn't like, and I think she gets it. One of her favorite things to do at 4 was tap "skip ad" and she'd shout it out whenever she found the "X" or link to skip them. I also run a pi-hole-like setup at home, filtering most ads at the DNS level, so we are overall as a family exposed to that abuse far less than unfiltered households.

sAbakumoff• 8 years ago

not a kid expert, but isn't restrictive environment just forces them to inevitable desire to try something that other kids do regularly?

sevensor• 8 years ago

My children are allowed to play on Fire tablets only during car trips, and only until the battery runs dry. The funny thing is, all the games stop working in between uses -- they expect to be able to phone home frequently, and most of the time they're on, they're not connected to the internet. So every long trip is preceded by a cycle of tablet charging and installing new games. When one of my kids asked me why we had to do this, I explained that we were able to get these tablets so cheap because Amazon and the game publishers get to be in control of what's on there. This led to an interesting conversation about the difference between tablets and laptops, and why Frozen Bubble and Tux Paint never stop working.

The game content is basically all branded characters.

LitFan7• 8 years ago

This comment is only my own opinion:

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.

ballenf2• 8 years ago

At some age you are correct, but I don't think 5 or 7 is it. Kid's reasoning skills just aren't developed enough yet at 5 to really understand what advertisers' motives are. Exposure will do little more than desensitize them to ads and instead let their subconscious absorb the message.

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.

fastball2• 8 years ago

Disregarding everything else, ads are a waste of time.

I'd rather my kids be reading than sitting thru ads.

bpizzi13• 8 years ago

I get your point, yet I'm not sure it reflects the (nuanced, as always) reality.

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).

mrhappyunhappy4• 8 years ago

If old enough teach her how to use a knife instead of shielding. 5-6 year olds can and do use knives under supervision.

rotw• 8 years ago

That sounds like a great environment!

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?

oliwarner3• 8 years ago

I'm perennially confused by the opinions expressed on HN and this is is no exception; the range alone is quite amazing.

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.

redbeard0x0a• 8 years ago

I've been paying for Youtube Premium (was "Youtube Red") for a while. While there are product placements and sponsorships in videos, not having to watch ads placed in the middle of videos is awesome. It makes YT a million times better, it isn't something you realize fully until you start watching a video on somebody else's phone/laptop/etc.

Mirioron8• 8 years ago

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?

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.

brightball2• 8 years ago

Agreed. My kids are allowed to play WiiU and Nintendo Switch, but anything on an iPad or an iPhone is off limits for exactly that reason.

I saw so many scary behaviors appearing that simply do not happen with Nintendo games.

LiterallyDoge2• 8 years ago

Can you elaborate?

nine_k• 8 years ago

Pretty drastic, I'd say.

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.

novaleaf• 8 years ago

I'm pretty near your situation (8 and 6yr olds), and do some things similar to you.

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.

blackhaz• 8 years ago

My son (9 years old) is turning into a Fortnite addict. I'm blaming myself for allowing online games. I've built him a PC so he could learn how to program. Sometimes we experiment with Unity together, sometimes we spend time in Python. But lately Fortnite is grabbing him more and more, and he spends all his allowed time (1.5 hours per day) there, so there's no time left for exploring other things. He can't control himself. He spends his savings on virtual items, significant amounts. He just blew $40 worth of his savings on virtual stuff.

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.

lsmarigo• 8 years ago

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.

xvector6• 8 years ago

That really sucks to hear. As I used to be a gaming addict myself as a child, I know that banning games for children absolutely does not work. He will find a way around it and he will learn not to trust you.

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.

Mirioron8• 8 years ago

Fortnite is T-rated, meaning that it's suitable for ages 13+. But as a parent it's your choice what you allow your kids to do, however it's still your job to raise your children, not the government's.

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.

slavik81• 8 years ago

That doesn't sound so bad. When I was younger, I probably spent $2000 into Yu-gi-oh! cards and tournaments over the course of a couple years. An hour of Counter-Strike each day wasn't that unusual, either. I have very fond memories of my time playing those games.

The question is whether they are happy with their choices.

alistproducer2• 8 years ago

Your strategy pretty much mirrors mine exactly. with a few exceptions. The grandparents got my son a Leap Pad, which we let him play a couple hours on weekends and they play iPad games when they're over the grandparent's when they visit once a week.

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.

tmaly• 8 years ago

I allow access to a very limited set of educational apps for a limited duration, less than 20 minutes for my 5 year old daughter.

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.

xvector6• 8 years ago

No internet access at 7 years old? That's pretty brutal. The internet was a central part of my childhood, I can't imagine myself without it.

bpizzi13• 8 years ago

How old are you? What were you doing at 7 on the internet? What do you think a 7yo would do today on current's web?

Mirioron8• 8 years ago

What if exposing them to ads when they are young builds up a tolerance towards ads? I definitely saw ads ever since I was young, but I pay no attention to ads nowadays. Often I don't even realize ads are there, because I seem to filter them out.

On another note, by age 7 you would expect them to be able to launch Age of Empires on their own though.

nkkollaw• 8 years ago

I've been buying AdGuard for 2 years: completely removes all ads from browsers and every single app.

Bought it for a family devices.

gU9x3u8XmQNG• 8 years ago

I have zero tolerance for advertisements. We don’t have “free to air” tv, nor use any services otherwise delivering advertisements. I’m more than happy to pay for content, eg; Netflix. I also actively purchase content via iTunes (movies, music). Apps, however, and that overall ecosystem are near dead to me.

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.

function_seven• 8 years ago

You probably know this, but in case you don't: A lot of apps that have "In-App Purchases" will have one that unlocks the ad-free version of the same app. Instead of the publisher listing two separate versions of their app in the store, they list just the one and handle the crap-free process using IAP instead.

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.

Cthulhu_5• 8 years ago

Yup, not to mention other in-app purchases for vanity items, xp boosters, etc. AAA games have those too nowadays (notably Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which has actively been designed to have a poor, plodding experience unless you pay extra for boosters - just like most mobile games).

VLM4• 8 years ago

At least for Android that's not individual and arbitrary, it's an official google policy to crack down on "repetitive content" apps.

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.

hesarenu• 8 years ago

There might be no ads on Netflix, but Netflix have their ads on other network like Youtube.

ihuman• 8 years ago

don’t accept anything with “in-app purchases”, and even struggle now to find the “Pay once and own” category

How do you expect the apps to make money if they can't show you ads or charge you money? Selling your data?

tobyhinloopen• 8 years ago

Thats what you get with free games. Why do you think they are free?

doombolt• 8 years ago

The problem here is that

* 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.

mirekrusin• 8 years ago

Last weekend I gave my almost 4 yo daughter my iPhone with Cut the rope on it as I remembered it was fun... oh my... after few minutes had to turn it off and came back to painting unicorns and playing with dolls - the amount of crap they put there nowadays is ridiculous, you can't do anything, you're constantly bombarded with popups I, myself, couldn't figure out how to close, some of them you have to wait 30 seconds to close, absolute garbage, can't even explain how the game works with different shit poping up all the time. I guess you have to write a game yourself for kids today.

sneak• 8 years ago

My bank (Chase) is now trying to sell me cars on the iOS app login screen and on the balance page. Third party ads. In my checking account app.

Nothing is safe.

newnewpdro• 8 years ago

If my bank did this to me I'd throw my computer across the room then immediately remove all my funds after digging out the spare.

wingerlang• 8 years ago

Third party apps would assume the third party is serving the ad right? I'd assume they are actually first party, meaning Chase is serving it.

user5994461• 8 years ago

I wouldn't assume that.

netsharc• 8 years ago

Hah... I wonder if they tailor the ads. "Hey this dude has good credit and his last car loan is 5 years ago... let's show him that Chevy ad.". Or if you go to healthy restaurants/stores: "let's show him the Tesla ad!".

esotericn2• 8 years ago

Upon entering the page, I am greeted with a page that looks like this:

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.

Double_a_924• 8 years ago

Final third: "Review our Cookie Policy"

Technically that's a good thing.

esotericn2• 8 years ago

Nah.

fipple2• 8 years ago

I downloaded 6TB of wholesome kid's content for my kids when they started to want to watch screens. Animal documentaries, Mister Rogers, Sesame Street, etc. The TV in our house can only access this content until they go to bed.

When we fly I replicate some of it to the iPad and take it along.

wilsonnb32• 8 years ago

I’m curious as to whether that 6TB of content was paid for (or public domain).

fipple2• 8 years ago

It was not paid for and it was not public domain. I do try to support the main producers of this content where I can (buying BBC Blu-Rays even though I have them already downloaded), but am not super strict about it. I do pirate.

thrower123• 8 years ago

There's so much hand-wringing about this of late, but it has ever been so, at least for the past sixty years. Ever since the advent of television, children's programming has been laced with breakfast cereal and toy ads. The era I grew up with in during the late 80s, early 90s, was all about merchandising, to the point that it's almost impossible to remember what started out as a cartoon and then became a toy line versus the other way round.

Somehow, "This time it is different!" But that seems incredibly myopic given any understanding of history.

SmellyGeekBoy5• 8 years ago

Those ads were policed properly, unlike some of the sexual / gambling / alcohol / otherwise unsuitable content I've seen advertised in kids' apps.

icebraining3• 8 years ago

There's been concerns about ads since they first appeared - certainly for the past sixty years. As it expands to occupying more and more of our lives, so the skepticism about it grows.

pythonaut_16• 8 years ago

The ads then probably weren't good either. But they were certainly less pervasive and hostile.

samwillis2• 8 years ago

I think we are very lucky here in the UK, the BBC have a channel called “CBeebies” aimed at 0-6yo whith all the videos available through a dedicated app, plus a huge range of games. Absolutely no ads and most have an educational message.

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).

apexalpha4• 8 years ago

Same here in The Netherlands where the NPO (dutch BBC) has video's, websites and games for kids of all ages.

It's such a bless for parents.

move-on-by3• 8 years ago

I installed CBeebies on my iPhone and looked at the pi-hole to see what type of DNS requests it was making when the app was opened (I haven't clicked on a single thing in the app)

* 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?

4ndr3vv• 8 years ago

I think that (although honourable) you're off topic here. We're discussing the prevelance of ads baked into apps that are designed specifically for children.

The ethical ramifications of third party data are important but the cbeebies apps do a great job of providing engaging, add free content.

dgzl2• 8 years ago

This reminds me of a thought experiment I was entertaining with a friend.

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?

oever• 8 years ago

People wearing sponsored clothing like sporters is held back by the cost of enforcement. This cost will drop soon when enforcement is automated by algorithms and self-surveillance via mobile phone.

leetcrew2• 8 years ago

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.

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.

dgzl2• 8 years ago

I think that forcing other subjects on the bus to view your advertisement would be insulting and an eyesore for them, thus being humiliating for you. I don't think a single logo would suffice though, I'm thinking of a very large and obnoxious advertisement, with many brands and logos. Essentially, endless ads that are stitched together. I couldn't imagine this being comparable to a Nike t-shirt.

skrebbel5• 8 years ago

Unlike the better parents in this thread, I sometimes let my toddler play an Android game. I can tell you with certainty that every ad in a toddler game is click fraud. He never wants to click the ad. He wants to play the game, but hits the wrong button.

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)

SmellyGeekBoy5• 8 years ago

Heh, reminds me of an alarm clock app I had in the very early days of Android where the "snooze" button and the ad would periodically swap places, meaning that in my half asleep state I'd be hitting the ad half the time. I'm not surprised that this kind of behaviour is still allowed, I'm sure it's highly lucrative. Also very hard to police.

LeifCarrotson• 8 years ago

It's temporarily lucrative for the app developer and probably for the app platform as well.

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?

logicchains• 8 years ago

(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).

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.

TheCoelacanth• 8 years ago

I'm pretty sure toddlers don't have the capacity to commit fraud because no reasonable person would rely on a toddler's representation of material facts to make a decision that could result in injury to themselves.

andrewla3• 8 years ago

Actually, usually the creator of the application showing the ads does in fact sign a contract with the ad publisher. They get money in exchange for clicks; if they are obtaining those clicks through subterfuge or dark patterns, they stand at a minimum to not receive their ad revenue, and if it is egregious and done with intent, then there's no reason that it wouldn't be considered fraud.

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

skrebbel5• 8 years ago

If I buy an ad, I expect it to be clicked consciously. Even if that's not explicit, which I think it ought to be, there's an implied contract there that if by pay per click, those clicks are made by people who choose to do so.

There's no difference between having scripts, robots, or toddlers generate fake clicks.

DanBC• 8 years ago

In my book, the fact that Google allows clickable ads in toddler games

In the UK you can report many of those ads to the regulator who can take action.

watwut3• 8 years ago

Have a look at lego games. They are age appropriate and have no ads and really good (plenty of them free). Also, I recommend common sense medit site to learn about which games are good or bad.

skrebbel5• 8 years ago

Agree,the Lego games are (mostly) great.

Thanks for the tip! Didn't know about common sense media and it's exactly what I was looking for!

benj1113• 8 years ago

Anyone uk based, iplayer is a good option. Although speaking as a father of a 2 yr old you're in trouble if their favourite program gets removed. So black market backup required.

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.

SmellyGeekBoy5• 8 years ago

The solution my wife and I came up with was to just not have kids. It's depressing to admit, but we're genuinely that disillusioned with the state of the world (we're in our mid-30s FWIW).

whywhywhywhy4• 8 years ago

Seems drastic maybe try going off the grid and into the countryside for a bit. Honestly the world isn't anywhere near as bad as a lot of the media and the social media hivemind will lead you to believe.

Double_a_924• 8 years ago

Don't shelter your kids too much. Just buy them the Playstation when they are old enough, and let them learn how to deal with the shit in the world.

benj1113• 8 years ago

Are you being flippant? Cant tell. I'm quite prepared to believe im yet another parent worrying about the latest X I don't understand. It just seems to me that at 11 /12 years old they will probably want computer games, and probably are not old enough to deal with 'the shit of the world'.

cauldron• 8 years ago

Get a router that supports dnsmasq, you can block most of ads, although it's easy to evade, you can't really control the kids when they are able to do that.

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.

mverwijs2• 8 years ago

Perhaps check out pi-hole.net.

sureaboutthis• 8 years ago

My kids grew up when all these things started coming about. My biggest regret is introducing my oldest to computer games because it distracted him away from me cause I ran my business out of my home and he always wanted to be with me. It has affected him in a negative way that I still see today as he turned 30.

kenhwang• 8 years ago

As someone working in advertising, I wonder how many of these apps and advertisers are in violation of COPPA. We have so much annoying code scrubbing so much information from users we suspect or discover to be children.

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.

bulditand• 8 years ago

We really don't want to advertise to children, they're absolutely awful for any meaningful non-impression metric for the advertiser.

Yeah, that's the reason not to advertise to children!

whywhywhywhy4• 8 years ago

Just a thought but maybe if parents were willing to spend enough money for developers to make a living then they wouldn't need to resort to ads and IAP to make a living.

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.

josefresco4• 8 years ago

I pay for Netflix (no ads) and YouTube premium which also removes ads. I also pay for basic cable (loads of ads).

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.

taormina• 8 years ago

Each individual app developer is making this particular decision, not Google. If you think apps should be free, this is what happens. Pay for your apps, and you shouldn't be subjected to advertisements. This is why I've historically refused to go back to Hulu (you don't get to double dip AND keep me as a customer).

thomasfedb2• 8 years ago

Beware the generation who are raised by phone addicts. Attachment and rearing requires active involvement — even from a distance.

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.

TaupeRanger2• 8 years ago

This is nonsense. Our ancestors only survived because they could be doing all kinds of stuff (you know, stuff that was necessary to survive) while the kids were playing around and keeping themselves busy. Children are more capable than we give them credit for. It's about making your interactions meaningful when you have them, not staring at them all the time. This is the kind of mindset that makes children grow up to be anxiety-ridden young adults. The studies show that emotional trauma (i.e. NOT "dad was looking at his phone when I bumped my head and wasn't staring directly at me", but actual trauma) causes problems in adolescence and adulthood. But most parenting within the normal range just does not matter. At all. Take a look at The Nurture Assumption, or read a primer: https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/03/parenting-doesnt-ma...

thomasfedb2• 8 years ago

I'm talking about toddlers, who definitely do need and seek reassurance as they explore the boundaries of their expanding world. As kids develop they need less and more distant supervision, but it is still important. Childhood neglect is demonstrably associated with borderline personality disorder, for example.

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.

athenot2• 8 years ago

I'm very aware of that. I noticed that my own attention can get sucked into my phone deeper than when I'm doing any other household task, which usually will have me meeting their gaze on a regular basis. And my toddlers can pick up on that so I try to not be looking at my phone when they are around but I'm not yet good at that.

josefresco4• 8 years ago

Bought the kids Amazon Kindle Fire's a while back. Would occasionally use one of them and every time I would launch Silk (the browser) an adult ad/website would load complete with graphic nudity. A new ad would load each day when launching Silk.

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.

VLM4• 8 years ago

The problem is the parents not reporting the infraction.

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.

josefresco4• 8 years ago

The problem is the parents not reporting the infraction.

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).

moltar• 8 years ago

YouTube videos too. I was at my friend’s place and they were showing some cartoon to their kid.

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!

logicallee• 8 years ago

"Dad when are you going to remortgage the house?"

"What? You're five years old, how do you know about mortgages"

"Well.. I was just thinking... Interest rates have never been lower"

jap• 8 years ago

I've spent a lot of time finding apps I trust enough to leave my kids mostly unsupervised with. For me it's mostly boiled down to finding trustworthy app publishers, I listed some here a while ago: https://medium.com/@jacksonpauls/apps-for-preschool-kids-304...

hpwrg• 8 years ago

I have no children, but I have seen a child in a loop of ads on a tablet. She was so fustrated, and no way to help her but to explain how the world works to a 4y old. The whole play store is deceiving, and no way for children to learn except trough frustration.

EastSmith2• 8 years ago

Father of 10 years old. Technology is everywhere. Pixels, Gaming laptops, Youtube. I think my son have not seen an ad in a long time. TV is replaced with Youtube (mainly kind of stupid local streamers), all Chromes (phone, laptop, tv) are equipped with ad blockers. The time spend on these devices is not limited at all.

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.

EastSmith2• 8 years ago

As for the apps - there is only one thing I can recommend in the app store: Intellijoy Educational Games for Kids.

empath75• 8 years ago

My kid learned all of his letters before the age of 2 with the Endless Reader app.

jpkeisala• 8 years ago

If your kid watches gamers playing Minecraft etc. on Youtube he probably is getting product placement ad's.

ashelmire• 8 years ago

That's extremely hard to avoid... even on HN!

all2• 8 years ago

I didn't see this anywhere:

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

mlcrypto• 8 years ago

I remember being 11 years old with dial up internet and getting to play RuneScape for 30 minutes every now and then. I always wanted to play more

satysin• 8 years ago

Ads are the reason I don't both with phone and tablet games anymore. If I want to game on the go I take the Switch with me. Same for my son (5yo). I also don't let him watch YouTube on my phone or tablet, only the computer where the ads are perfectly blocked thanks to uBlock Origin. I run Pi-hole but it is not perfect on mobile devices. I was very tempted at getting YouTube Premium but at £11.99 a month I feel it is too much. I would have gone for it if it were £6 or 7 but something about £12 makes me question how much value it is really giving me. Pricing psychology is strange like that. Not to mention YT Premium only removes the YouTube ads not all the sponsored content that is a part of the video. That is becoming a bigger issue imho but not part of this discussion.

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.

floatboth• 8 years ago

Heh, I grew up with PC games (mostly pirated, though I still have my legit DVD copy of NFS Most Wanted) —

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.

pszndr• 8 years ago

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?)

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

wst_• 8 years ago

My kid is around 3yo now and likes My Little Pony, so I decided to see what's on the Android market. I've found out some app, genuine, from Hasbro. I got it for some time now and in the course of last few months number of ads showed during game play jumped up dramatically. From starting the game, for first two minutes I have counted 6-8 ads, each one including not only at least 30 sec video but also some stub of application after that lasting also around 30 seconds, unless manually disabled. Thing is that close buttons are cramped somewhere in the corner, small and they don't appear right from the start. It doesn't seem to be this concrete application problem. Rather some decision has been made by Google advertisement platform, it seems. It's so annoying that I am not even going to consider purchasing the product, as I would in other circumstances.

This, paradoxically, have had a great influence on our lives - no more playing games.

move-on-by3• 8 years ago

This is one of many reasons I do not feel the least bit bad about having a Pi-Hole [1] on my network to block ads and trackers [2]. The companies behind this are predatory. The advertisement and analytic platforms they use are complicit. I have an obligation to shield my family from their manipulative and malicious intentions. The option to just avoid these types of apps/websites is a farce. The platforms have infiltrated our lives at every level - analytics are always being collected. My own ISP has the right to spy on me and my family and sell our activities to be used against us in the form of advertisements.

[1] https://pi-hole.net

[2] https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

rchaud2• 8 years ago

I remember playing boatloads of old-school Flash games in the mid-2000s. Never saw a single ad in-game. When Jobs wrote his "On Flash" open letter, I thought at the time he was pushing for a mobile-friendly equivalent of what Flash offered. It was years later I realized he was really only pushing to keep the walled garden "app store" the dominant distribution model for interactive mobile content, with Apple taking a cut of every dollar spent.

I really hope HTML5 games sitting on simple websites go back to being a thing.

tqi• 8 years ago

My recollection was those sites were stuffed to the gills with banner ads... how else would those free to play flash game sites make money?

rchaud2• 8 years ago

You're right, they must have been showing ads of some sort. I simply don't remember any; perhaps they weren't that egregious or so numerous that I would recall it ~13 years later. I know I didn't have any adblockers installed on my PC until at least 2010, so I must have seen them if there were any.

post_break• 8 years ago

And now Apple removed the ability to see in app purchases, so you can't even see if you can remove the ads with a paid upgrade.

scotty792• 8 years ago

I wonder why people pay to show those adds there. This must be a lot of very low quality ad clickthroughs.

ameister142• 8 years ago

I run ads - I really, really don't want to advertise to kids so I have an exclusion list of hundreds of kids-oriented apps and youtube channels where Google insists on placing my ads; I believe this is because parents own the phones and log into things and Google thinks it's within the 25-64 demo I chose.

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.

WrtCdEvrydy• 8 years ago

https://adnauseam.io/

This is my favorite after adblock.

mtgx• 8 years ago

What's almost just as bad is that networks such as Google also abuse advertisers by counting random clicks from kids. All ads on mobile should require a 2-click action, and it shouldn't be easy to click twice by mistake either. Like the second button should appear in another location of the screen or something.

brownkonas• 8 years ago

As a parent , I simply request search functionality in the App Store and Play Store to search for apps with no ads , and no in-app purchases.

Happy to pay an up front fee for well designed , strategy based games and apps for limited use by my kids.

IvanK_net• 8 years ago

At least kids can still use thier Apps, unlike me at NYTimes.com

MrLeftHand• 8 years ago

I bought for my kids Amazon Fire tablets and had to realise there are no games which were suitable for them. Each one of them had some sort of ads, even the completely free ones on their Underground market.

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.

fpn• 8 years ago

I am going to take a different position, my kids are now trained to not even see the ads. The search for the hidden x to close the ad is fully automatic.

yohann305• 8 years ago

Developers have to make a living, that's what happens with the race to the bottom pricing in app stores

NelsonMinar• 8 years ago

The US should ban all advertisement to children.

derReineke• 8 years ago

I feel like whoever wrote this doesn't have kids or just now started paying attention to what they are doing on their devices. Also, this seems like it would be really obvious; people want money. Kids love to just click everything so there is a ton of revenue there.

jm20• 8 years ago

We've had a pretty popular kids coding app in the App Store for about 6 years now (Kodable). We've never remotely considered having ads and never will, and from the article it sounds like this heavily skews towards the ad-heavy Google Play store.

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).

ngngngng• 8 years ago

I'm surprised no one has released an ad blocking router yet. Just plug it in and it has default dns rules in place to block all domains serving ads. Like a pihole but built into the router. It could broadcast a separate network that doesn't block ads in case the ad blocking broke something you needed to use. If I had any experience in manufacturing i'd be all over this.

humanetech• 8 years ago

For all those of you who are worried, and want to help work on solutions to the harms that come with our modern technology, I invite you to join the Humane Tech Community at our community forum [0].

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.

[0] https://community.humanetech.com

[1] https://humanetech.com

pbarnes_1• 8 years ago

iOS tablet + pi-hole - anything youtube = good kids tablet.

dabei• 8 years ago

My strategy as a parent: cultivate healthy hobbies with your kid. I taught chess to my daughter when she was 5. We play it together all the time, not only standard chess but also all kinds of variants (she invented a few fun variants herself). She goes to chess club every week and tournaments every couple of months. The iPad is loaded with dozens of chess apps, nothing else. Chess, together with other activities like art and sports take up most of her leisure time. There is no room left for the ads infested games and videos. We never have to tell her not to play or watch those. And she's having a great time anyway.

qsymmachus• 8 years ago

As the comments on this post make clear, there are a lot of HN readers who go to great lengths to reduce or even eliminate screen time for their kids. Just this week, the NY Times wrote a piece about how parents who work in tech are most wary of the impact screen time has on their children[1].

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...

xvector6• 8 years ago

On a macro scale, I am absolutely horrified at what this will spell for our democracy. Conditioning the majority of kids via ads to achieve certain political goals and groom certain mindsets is absolutely on the table here.

andrew-dc2• 8 years ago

Father of two boys, and kinda lapsed gamer. Wanted to introduce boys to some fun games we can play together. I cannot express how maddening the entire casino/micro-transaction transformation of all games has ruined everything for kids. I would happily buy a game out-right if it disabled all up-sells, and transactional BS. Even frikkin Minecraft launches with a bazillion pay upgrades now, and that's after you already bought it.

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.

tomjen3• 8 years ago

As someone who used to develop games I would love to work on non-ad games, but the way the appstore works, you have to get on the top ten to make money (first page of google effect), which you can only do if you charge .99 (in the paid category) or free and then fill it with ads and shit. It takes a lot of advertisments elsewhere to get on the top ten apps in the appstore, which means if you don't fill your app with crap you can't afford to get the app up high enough that you break even.

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.

andrew-dc2• 8 years ago

Oh yeah, I get that the stores and industry are a major problem here. Devs who don't play the store ranking game, end up losing. I resent that very much. I'm not certain what would be a decent solution for this problem, cause even if games were rated by users on "quality" - then the shift would be to game that quality system, by rewarding players to rank things higher quality, etc. Just a bummer.

Tsubasachan• 8 years ago

You don't need root to block ads on Android. To hell with the marketing industry:

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.jak_linux.dns66/

If you're on iOS its FUBAR though.

Kids’ Apps Are Crammed With Ads

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