This post is sponsored by Toca TV.
If I want to feel old, all I have to do is think about my first computer. I might as well have been tapping out morse code on it, as it was archaic and hardly functional. I mean, lining up dot matrix paper alone would have me giving up today, but nevertheless we plunged forward, waiting 30 minutes for MS-DOS to boot up and cramming floppy disks into slots to save our work. This will all sound so hilarious to our kids someday, and they’ll ask us to tell them about our first car phones with the antennas we had to pull out first or the AOL chat rooms where we could–gasp!–talk to people in REAL TIME, as if we drove covered wagons and waited on town criers to deliver our news.
When I wasn’t waiting for my computer to boot up, I was thinking about being a mom. I was of one those kids who thought about being a mom all the time. When I was 16 and most girls my age were tearing out pictures of Jonathon Taylor Thomas from Tiger Beat magazine, I was circling which stroller I wanted someday from the JC Penney catalogue. What I couldn’t have prepared for though, was how much raising my kids would look different from the world I knew then because of how much technology would change. No one was talking about how to keep your kids on safe sites or what’s too early to have a social media account in 1988 because we thought making it through the Mushroom Kingdom in Super Mario Bros. was the greatest of our technological worries.
Twenty-eight years later, the jig is up. We’ve advanced, and technology and the Internet are a big part of our children’s world, incorporated in their education, our homes and the way we dream about the future.
If you’re reading this, most likely you’re connected in some way, and quite possibly your children are too–at least through iPad apps and videos, whether you use them only occasionally for road trips and rewards or, like many of us, have praised the holy gods of eating out when an iPad saved a dinner and transformed a near “GET IN THE CAR NOW–WE’LL TAKE THIS TO GO” trip into a “Hey, let’s order dessert” stay. And after 24 hours in a car, driving both ways to and from Michigan this past summer, listen: I will sing the praises of technology.
As parents though, we know we’re treading new waters, pioneering parenting practices in this digital world, without a lot of data to show their effects yet. We know that monitoring screen time–both our kids’ and our own–is important, and we are all figuring out what’s appropriate for our kids and our families. What’s most critical though, is that the time our kids do spend on devices involves carefully regulated content and that we control the firewall of input that goes into their precious little brains.
One of our favorite fun and interactive app creators, Toca Boca, is launching its much anticipated video streaming service for kids, Toca TV, which will provide a playful video experience for kids in an ad-free, safe and fun environment–no third-party advertising or sponsored ads that pop up while your kids play which can lead them into danger zones. My favorite part? Old-fashioned curating of every single video that’s added. That means Toca TV doesn’t rely on algorithms but rather curates their content using a scorecard where each video is watched by a member of their team to make sure it’s right for kids.
Toca TV has every kind of video your kid could want, from Minecraft gameplay to craft D.I.Y.s. Lainey loves the kid-hosted life hacks videos and craft D.I.Y.s. Thanks to the comic book shoes D.I.Y. she saw on Toca TV, we’ve got another Mod Podge project on the docket (not mad). Dash and Nella love the animated originals with funny Toca Boca characters they recognize. There’s also a recording tool where kids can record their own videos and apply silly animated filters for interactive fun where they exercise their creativity. Best part–the videos only save to your device, so it’s completely safe.
Toca TV is a subscription service, only $4.99 USD a month — and you can cancel anytime! You can try Toca TV for free on the App Store–download it today to get three free sessions.
Someday we’ll tell them all about the pagers we wore and dial-up Internet and what it was like to play Frogger with a joystick. But for now, we can give them a little fun monitored screen time without worrying that they’ll be diverted into the bowels of hell.
(that pointed foot though…!)
OMG. I don’t think I’ve ever met another person who was more interested in the baby stuff than the current trends! I remember going to Sears and Service Merchandise and wandering the baby aisles while my mom shopped nearby…and I was an only child and under 10 when I started doing that! I’m so glad both of our dreams came true.
My older cousin and I would sit with the JC Penney catalog spread open on our lap and play a game called “pick one thing”. Either you were on the left or right and had to pick 1 thing from that side of the catalog spread. We always went to the baby section first. We picked out cribs and sheets and baby bottles and side lamps with clowns and balloons (yikes). Then we even named our children who would someday have the most beautiful nursery in the world. Fun times. Thanks for taking me down that road this morning.