This week, I got a stealth advertisement for a new product from AT&T vaguely disguised as an editorial submission. The submission came from an AT&T employee, who worked on the new project, and while it was – despite their protestations to the contrary – absolutely a sale’s pitch, that doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t raise some good points.
I know, I worry a lot about what my kids have access to when it comes to media – be it games, movies, television programs or, probably most worrying, fan-made videos.
I already knew I wasn’t the only one. But if I needed it confirmed any further, Betty Francis, VP & general manager of AT&T Mid-Atlantic States, confirmed it when she wrote to me about their new product. Because while they want to sell you a product, have no doubt, they aren’t a solution in search of a problem. The problem is real.
As she noted in her submission:
A new survey by Recon Analytics revealed that 62 percent of parents feel a level of guilt when giving their child a device.
The survey found the potential behavioral impact was a top concern of parents. Other reasons for guilt include possible access to inappropriate content, fear of judgment from other parents, and impending visual problems from blue light.
However, as most parents who have survived a trans-Atlantic flight or a long road trip with a young child will tell you, sometimes reality hits and you must hand over your phone or tablet to keep them occupied. Sigh.
Yet the same survey found nearly 80 percent of parents expressed more comfort in purchasing a device for their child if they could control settings directly from their phones.
The product they’ve developed, of course, answers the questions Francis herself has about her children’s online security. Such as, does such an application exist? (It does now, obviously.) But it also asked legitimate questions some of us may have, especially as our kids graduate from tablets to telephones and start spending more time outside the home.
Questions like, who can contact my kid? How do I block content and what can they see online? Parenting groups and bloggers discuss the same things because protecting our children in the digital age is a universal experience.
She isn’t wrong about how difficult it can be. Or about how nice it would be to control it from a separate application on your own device.
We, personally, have struggled with the Amazon tablets designed for kids. While it is easy enough to lock it down, there are times it is too locked down – and too complicated to grant extra permissions. It requires logging into the parental account on the tablet for some items – something that only one parent in the household can currently do, at least in our case. (Though I can still purchase content for his tablet through my personal account as his parent, of course.)
I’ve also been frustrated by Amazon’s blatant cash-grabs rebranded as safety features. For instance, they took away the ability for parents to grant their children access to specific child-friendly content they have already purchased or otherwise have access to as a Prime member. Instead, they have gated that content behind a separate “child friendly” suite of curated shows and applications they want you to purchase as an add-on to your family account.
This new AT&T product, amiGO, pairs an app for parents with a child themed tablet.
While they pitch it as something innovative, it reminds me a great deal of the (now defunct) Nabi tablet. Those were sturdy, child friendly devices, with a robust parental control interface. But the parental control portal did have to be accessed via web-browser. I’m not sure how phone-friendly those controls were – I didn’t have children yet when I first became aware of their products – but it doesn’t matter now that the company is out of business.
If AT&T is finally recognizing a need that an independent developer noted more than a decade ago, that means that maybe other providers will get on board too. Maybe we’ll finally get some better choices than what is on the market currently.
Because, while they might have been fibbing about their editorial not being a sales pitch, Francis was right when she said, “technology is inevitable.”
Whether you need to keep a kid occupied on a road trip, need to avoid a meltdown in the doctor’s office waiting room, or you want them to use it as an educational device to practice reading or mathematics, technology is inevitable. Giving parents the tools to manage it is the least that industry can do if they want our money.
