While stocking up on back-to-school pencils, notebooks, backpacks, and clothes for their kids, many parents also are scoping out new gadgets that can entertain and educate. These days they’re surprised by what they see in the electronics aisle: kid-friendly laptops, phones, and other gadgets that are growing more sophisticated and look increasingly like their grown-up counterparts.
Toymakers and electronics companies are catering to the rise in tech literacy among younger and younger children. Kids are spending more time on activities such as surfing the Web and operating DVRs, and more of them own computers and mobile phones than just a few years ago. That’s created an opportunity to market what were once thought of as adult tech products to kids.
“There definitely is a trend of looking at adult technologies and seeing whether they are adaptable for younger kids,” says Kathleen Kremer, manager of child research at Fisher-Price. As Kremer tests products with children in the company’s East Aurora [N.Y.] research lab, she often finds that her team has underestimated kids’ facility with gadgets. For example, testing of a digital camera designed for children 5 and older revealed that kids as young as 3 could easily use it to take pictures. So Fisher-Price changed the label.
Parents Lead the Way
Some 93 percent of teenagers now use the Internet, up from 87 percent in 2004, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Kids ages 12 to 17 spend two more minutes on video games per day than they did in 2004, and two more minutes watching DVR shows and movies than they did on the VCR that same year, according to Nielsen. Also, 31 percent of children between 8 and 10 now own mobile phones, according to unpublished data from a forthcoming study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, up from 21 percent…