- Who is this post for? Parents of children
- What does it discuss? The pros and perils of buying a smart toy
- How does it benefit you? Balanced perspective on whether a smart toy is the right choice for you and your child
If you’re a parent there’s a good chance you noticed a story that appeared mid-November about the company Vtech, a major player in the kids’ toys business. Vtech had its database hacked and had personal information stolen from 6.4 million (!) children’s accounts. The stolen information, which was not encrypted, included names, email addresses, passwords, secret questions and answers for password retrieval, IP addresses, postal addresses, download histories and children’s names, genders and birthdates.
If a toy is called ‘smart’ then it’s very likely to be connected to the Internet in some way. IT security, however, is not a traditional area of expertise for toymakers thus leading to some IT security experts calling the ‘internet of Toys’ the ‘Wild West’. There are also concerns that information shared with such toys are ultimately used for advertising and marketing purposes. The activist group Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood recently analysed Mattel’s new ‘Hello Barbie’ toy and said “When Barbie’s belt buckle is held down, everything your child says is transmitted to cloud servers, where it will be stored and analysed by ToyTalk, Mattel’s technology partner.” Mattel did respond by saying that no conversation history was stored and data would never be used for advertising purposes.
We do however believe there are many benefits to smart toys if toy companies can rigorously address their gaps in IT security. The company Elemental Path is soon to release a toy dinosaur that learns the best way to interact with your child and answer his/her questions. For example, if a child asks it “How far away is the moon?”, a five-year-old will get a different answer to an eight-year-old. Donald Coolidge, head of business strategy at Elemental Path said “One of the reasons we built the dinosaur was because kids ask so many questions and we wanted to build something so that they could continue to ask questions and make up stories”
What are your views on smart toys? Friend or foe (or somewhere in between!)?
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