Much thanks to the Apple Gods for creating the iPad. Last weekend my fiancé and I took a quick trip to Montreal with our 21-month-old son Connor. Somewhere between Kingston and Cornwall the little guy mastered the Wheels on the Bus app, the $1.99 download that lets kids touch their way through an interactive journey featuring a jumping teddy bear, bubble-popping fish, and a cake-tossing baker.
Connor was amused for a good couple of hours, perfectly timed between naps. On our drive back from Montreal we let him play with the iPad again. This time he figured out how to navigate between the "Bus" app and several others, putting a big smile on his face while I watched as he swiped effortlessly from app to app and then page to page.
When we got back home we put the iPad away and turned on the TV to get up-to-date on our local news. Connor approached the set with some hesitation, but quickly pushed his tiny little hands on the lower part of the screen. Slowly his eyebrows squished into a frown as he realized that he couldn't interact with anything in front of him. Frustrated, he looked at us and I could almost read his thoughts: "What's wrong with this machine?"
At first, I wanted to believe that our son was some sort of child tech prodigy. He's always been around gadgets, so he was obviously ready to jump from watching cartoons on TV to playing games on the iPad. While I wanted to believe this, I told the "touch" story to a couple of friends this week and they mentioned that their toddlers have done the same thing. They're so used to interacting with iPhones and iPads, so the television (in their young minds) is just taking up space in the living room.
This week Nielsen released a study showing 31 per cent of 6 to 12-year-olds in the US put the iPad at the top of their gadget list (the television set was much further down, below a mobile phone, computer, Sony PlayStation 3, and a number of other devices). Now instead of scouring tech blogs and following digital gurus, I think a more accurate picture of the future of technology lies in our children's hands.