I was moved to start writing about kids and technology after sharing some thoughts and observations I had with my daughter’s school counselor, and a friend who is a clinical social worker. Before I start getting in deep, it’s probably important to know a bit about who I am, and where they came from.
I’ve been working as a product and user experience designer in tech for about 17 years, and I started off my career in video games. I helped design a handful of addictive web-based games (usually on the art-side, though later more on the UI/UX). I also worked for a while in marketing games, creating high performance systems solving for highest rates of conversion, to get new players into these games. I thoroughly enjoyed the work environment, a bunch of fellow gamers and nerds all working together on things we enjoyed. This all changed with the rise of mobile games.
As the iPhone took off in popularity, there was a fundamental shift in the game design space. I will write more about this in a future article, but the changes in games led me to quit the industry and never look back (hint: it’s addiction). The rest of my career was mostly B2B software, lots of big data products, predictive insights, dashboards, and other useful business tools, but I’ve always kept an eye on how video games have evolved.
Now that I have kids of my own, they’ve become the unwitting subject of many of my own experiments in user experience. Even before we had kids, my partner and I were in agreement of how we should approach mobile devices use for our kids: avoid addictive patterns, and they are a tool, not a toy (well, sometimes a toy).
After being careful monitoring and guiding their relationship with technology and games, I have got to the point where I’m comfortable sharing my findings. I’ve gone through my notes with child professionals, clinical social workers, other parents, and teachers, so far they’ve all validated my observations, and lately have encouraged me to write and speak on the subject. So here I am!
Anyhow, I can’t wait to share more with you. This has been quite a journey and getting all my notes in order will be a lot of fun. In the meantime, enjoy my daughter enjoying Tetris shortly after I showed her a girl playing it competitively (it has quickly become one of her favorite games).