It’s A Toy, Not A Tool!

Do toddlers need advance training in iPhone recognition and operation prior to their acquisition of the ability to read? Probably not, but thanks to Groupon, parents all over these fine North American territories can now be sure that Junior will be prepared to beg for the iPhone 14 at Christmas just in time for Kindergarten Spring Break. Here, have a look:

Now, please, don’t go insane if you miss this deal. Little Sofia or Jackson can use your phone, right? After all, is your personal communication device really a tool? Oh, it is, huh? Are you saving lives with it or educating the great unwashed? Or are you just Instagramming your last sloppy but oh-so-yummy In-and-Out burger, updating your Facebook timeline with a Gandhi quote pasted into a kitten picture, Tweeting that, yes, yet again, you’re bored at work, can’t wait for Friday (and FSM help us because you’re a heart surgeon), or are you Pinning those really cute shoes you just saw on the Zappos site? Again.

What truly wonderful about this offering is the realism. Just have a look at the Apple-like round home button, square app badges with rounded corners and dock at the bottom of the screen:

Okay, okay, some of the icons are Android-like, but c’mon, now, who’s being picky. The point is that your favourite child will be ready to effectively leverage portable technology without anxiety and without having fallen behind the curve in a social environment where embracing communication technology, as defined by the social fads of the moment, is crucial to avoid being culled from the Herd. Make no mistake, this “toy” is very much a tool – one that may, in fact, save your child’s life, or at least, her or his social standing and in a corollary way,  his or her. or its, career. Is there a Porsche Cayenne in your child’s future? And I mean in the sense of ownership, not as in providing services for cold cash on the back seat in a Turnpike service area.

There’s a difference between a toy-anything where the object is clearly meant as a plaything, an exaggeration of the mysterious objects in Mommy and Daddy’s world. In my misspent, pre-getting-beat-up-in-the-schoolyard-because-of-dweebiness youth, toy phones looked like this:

This phone has everything! There’s the phone part, sure, with ringly-dingly dial action, but there’s also bright blue wheels that assure the ranging mini-me that Phone-y can follow wherever I yank him by the narrow vinyl string that actually represents his super-skinny Beatnik beard. And the eyes: oh, the eyes, with their piercing blue gaze of wonder. A child fortunate to be the caretaker of this phonetastic distortion of grown-up reality will soon learn that this toy’s rosy-cheeked visage will now and forever scrutinise, up and down, her tiny frame, sizing up whether the friendship is going anywhere and  if it’s all worth it. Now, that’s a real life lesson. Also, it’s white, mostly, so it has to be okay.

What are the alternatives? Outside? It’s cold or hot or dirty there? Read a book? Toddler’s can’t read, so it’s a waste of time trying to get them to do anything useful. How hard can it be to keep a little mind engaged and out of the way? Surely there’s an app for that.