Lil' Techies

Tori Spelling (actress, reality TV star) has opened a Twitter account for her 3-year old. She is actually getting a lot of grief for this, possibly because she has made it available to the public (and the fact that he is not actually writing the tweets, but they are written in his name).

I think it’s a great idea–kids are so funny at that age and documenting their cuteness never hurt anyone! Beyond that, I started to think of how Twitter could be useful for older children in a controlled and parent-monitored environment.

• An account for kids would have to be kept “private”.
• The email address given to Twitter would have to be a parent’s address so that “follow” requests could be monitored.
• If grandma, grandpa, mom or dad are also using Twitter, the followers could be limited to these people.
• To keep the child’s interest, followers would need to be supportive, such as responding to their tweets and writing directly to the child.

Possible Concerns

• The trending topics might not always be age-appropriate
• Spammers could still @ your child’s account
• Hackers

My kids will spend an entire car trip hooked up to DVD players, iPods or gaming devices if I let them. This seems to be typical of Generation Z, who are digital natives born in the age of on-demand entertainment. I actually took time during our latest trip to teach them how to look out the window.

To encourage them to window-watch, I used technology in advance of the trip. We sat down and searched Google Images for things they might see on their upcoming travels, like silos, lakes, windmills, and cityscapes. I printed out these pages for them to color when we saw one and make a little booklet for them.

For other ideas on using the Internet to encourage non-tech travel, try MomsMinivan.com:101 Car Game and Road Trip Activities.