Setting up a tablet for a 3 year old
I feel like he deserves to have access to technology (and he's alone and inside a lot due to pandemics)
And - holy shit - technology for kids is a horrorscape wasteland
I feel like he deserves to have access to technology (and he's alone and inside a lot due to pandemics)
And - holy shit - technology for kids is a horrorscape wasteland
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I have been wondering about this (as a grandparent of a nearly-two.) I give nothing but clothes, books, and physical toys (wood blocks and - oddly - canvas bags to store toys in have been hits.)
The kid avoids triggering the higher-tech toys which make noises, but loves the blinking lights. Books, which give control of a consenting adult, are huge hits. And computers/tablets in video calls are popular too.
By far the favourite thing is a cell phone, the least-safe tech thing.
We are pretty good with books (have dozens), and avoid toys which make noise, but aren't sticklers about it. So far our best toy has been a 5ft geodesic dome in the backyard and a sandbox.
But we also got a jooki.com/ for Christmas for our 2 year old, and that's definitely well liked, but has kinda turned into a bedtime toy. Now that he's turning three though we're talking about tablets. I feel like before he was very close to three he could play Balloon Pop and other really minimal games on a phone, but not really engage with them. And I think he was mostly ok with this. As he gets closer to three, video is more exciting to him, and that worries me, I hate passive entertainment like TV, but with a recent bout of bad weather he was inside bored a lot.
LeapFrog makes a fairly major tablet, but I really distrust their privacy model as explained.
Amazon makes one too - but no.
There's a few other ruggedized kids tablets, but I dislike them.
Soon-to-be-three year old has also just begun to figure out the Nintendo Switch, but isn't super understanding.
VTech's Innotab seems to be at least better (assuming you avoid KidConnect which I cannot find usefully laid out privacy info about), though I might DNS blackhole a few domains just in case, and it's primary method of getting games is cartridges, which is a nice to have (no internet needed to install a game). So I'm giving him an Innotab Sunday - my review is only based on what I've read, not first hand experience.
All in all - I'm not an anti-screentime dad, I'm an anti-passive dad, I want my kid imagining and engaging as the first and foremost. And I see a tablet, well used, as a vehicle to do that. I also think that he's gonna need tech to exist in the world we have, so let's figure it out.
Definitely avoiding cellphones without maximal supervision, even though it is a pinephone, which is in theory safer.