What’s Next in Kid-Tech?

Tablets and smartphones offer kids new ways to play, watch and learn, but they can also cause new fears for some parents, who struggle to keep up with what’s deemed OK for their little ones.

Advancements in technology mean that "high-tech" is now rapidly changing and cheaply mass-produced. What used to be super-genius-lab-level stuff is accessible to more and more families. In other words, the initial wave of apps, games and video-on-demand services are just the beginning for this generation of kids. So here’s the big question: what’s next?

It can be hard to forecast which future technologies will hit the mainstream (forget transporters and jetpacks, we still don’t have those hoverboards we were promised). However, given how often some categories appear in headlines or are championed by early adopters with deep pockets, it seems like there might be some safe bets. Here are four emerging technologies that your kids may be using in the not-so-distant future.

Virtual Reality

When we talk about "future technology," virtual reality (VR) always comes up. A sci-fi staple (e.g. Star Trek’s Holodeck), the concept involves a computer-created three-dimensional environment that you can interact with. In other words, put on the special glasses and your living room becomes a jungle. Wear the special gloves and you can toss a not-really-there rock into the not-really-there jungle stream.

Put on the special glasses and your living room becomes a jungle.

The Oculus Rift probably the most high-profile VR system in development, but there are also plans for a semi-similar (and more affordable) ViewMaster version. Google also has a low-fi VR setup—Cardboard, which is basically a DIY cardboard face-mount for your smartphone that uses stereoscopic software (like those old-skool red/blue movie glasses) to create 3D images.

As VR gets better and better, applications theoretically go way beyond immersing yourself in games. Your child could become a time traveller and see what her home looked like decades or centuries ago. He could walk on the moon or the ocean bottom, sit beside Beethoven on the piano bench or face-off against the greatest athletes in history. 

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Wearables

Combining technology with accessories or clothes, wearables are a little less out there than virtual reality. Wearables have been in the news for a while thanks to Apple’s new line of watches and the renaissance of the pedometer into an array of fitness-tracking, calorie-counting, heart-rate-monitoring devices.

Aimed at four to 10-year-olds, children's wearables focus on twin concerns—safety and exercise.

One of the big pushes for wearables is the children’s market. Aimed at four to 10-year-olds (or, more accurately, their parents), children's wearables focus on twin concerns—safety and exercise. In other words, they can track your kids’ whereabouts and whether they’re getting their heart rates up throughout the day.

Some of these devices make fitness into a game, letting parents send challenges (or words of encouragement) to their kids’ wrists, from wiggling and hopping to riding a bike. Others also use cell coverage, Bluetooth or GPS to provide tracking—long-range (e.g. out in the neighbourhood or with friends) or immediate (e.g. in the mall or amusement park crowd).

As with most new technologies, wearbles still have some kinks to be worked out, from battery life and signal range to durability. For some families, there’s also the matter of whether wearables take helicopter parenting to new aerial levels of monitoring. As TechCrunch puts it, “Kids wearables aren’t without controversy. Concerns focus on the potential intrusion into privacy via techno-enabled, heavy-handed parental surveillance. GPS tracking of dependents who don’t have a say in the matter is a clear avenue for concern.”

3D Printing

3D printing is exactly what it sounds like. A 3D printer creates a physical item from a digital file—use a computer program to draw a bowl and the machine lays down successive layers of material like an old dot-matrix printer to produce it.

Until 3D printers are accessible to families in their own living rooms, you can still try them out in many cities across Canada.

So far, lots of the press about 3D printing has been about the medical world (like the creation of customized prosthetics or even organ replacements) or large-scale things like using concrete to 3D print a house. But as price points lower and 3D printers become easier to use, there are also some really cool possibilities for next-level kid crafting. Make your own plastic tiaras or toys for play or make-believe! Draw a spaceship or castle on your iPad and then have the 3D printer in the den give it life! Disney is even working on a device that chisels away layers of fabric to print out soft objects.

There’s still a long way to go, though. The website of Printeer, a 3D printer specifically intended for kids, now reads: “development and production ... has been indefinitely suspended, due to our inability to manufacture ... at previously estimated costs." Until 3D printers are accessible to families in their own living rooms, you can still try them out in many cities across Canada. Schools, libraries and even private businesses will let you borrow or rent the equipment to practise the precision required before you’re able to bring one home.

Web-linked peripherals

In the late 1980s, I was terrible at Duck Hunt (the Nintendo game involving, well, you can guess), but I still loved it because of the idea that the physical gun in my hand was shooting the pixels on a screen. The melding of the digital world and the real world has improved since those days, but the general concept remains the same.

Now, there’s Anki, the 21st century equivalent of Hot Wheels, along with iPad accessories like Osmo, which rethink collaborative family games and activities on screen. There are app-driven toy balls that have recently been reborn as Star Wars droids and basketballs that measure spin, acceleration and force to improve your kid’s jump shot (or yours). There may soon be a device that pairs your child’s toothbrush with a tablet or phone to, in the producer’s words, “turn the simple hygiene apparatus into a gaming controller to make brushing teeth fun.” Is this something the world needs? Maybe not, but if it can instill good oral care practices at an early stage, it may not be a bad thing.

In many ways, a lot of this stuff—not just web-linked toys, but also apps, eBooks and preschooler-geared communications in general—is more about tweaking traditional toys and tools with technology, rather than changing childhood altogether.

Things get flashier, but the basics remain. When he was little, my dad flew kites unsuccessfully and I was terrible at remote-controlled airplanes. Maybe the tradition will continue and my daughter and son will one day repeatedly crash-land their camera-outfitted drone—but first, it needs to come down in price (and I get the first turn).