With Amazon Fire tablets being marketed to children as young as 3, how is a parent, or grandparent for that matter, to draw the line when it comes to technology?

We asked Douglas Wainwright, Head of Lower School at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, how technology is being integrated into her school. (Douglas is a female who credits her masculine name to being born in the South where boys are named Fay or Lynn and girls are named, well, Douglas.)

“For over a decade, every student is given a tablet starting in pre-K through fourth grade,” said Wainwright. “However, we believe they should be writing with their hands, making, doing and creating content, not using their tablets the majority of the time.”

While students took their tablets home during COVID, now they remain in the classroom. “In the Lower School, we use a Learning Management System (LMS) that organizes courses and assignments called Seesaw. It’s a user-friendly platform for non-readers with visual icons. Our science team built a resource on Seesaw that records students’ experiments on their tablets and allows them to take photos,” she said.

Protections are built into the tablets at the Lower School. “They are heavily restricted. We have firewalls that prevent downloading anything and they can’t email each other,” she said. 

Wainwright, who has two children, ages 11 and 14, feels strongly about children creating content rather than consuming it. She also believes in the value of teaching kids cursive writing. 

“We spend a lot of time teaching kids handwriting, spelling and cursive. There are important connections between the hand and brain. You are doing students a disservice by neglecting that pathway.”

As for what age to place a tablet in a child’s hand, Wainwright is in accord with the American Academy of Pediatrics, which suggests no screen time before 2 years of age and limited screen time between ages 2 and 5. 

This means not keeping kids occupied with a tablet while you’re driving, shopping or making dinner – but interacting with your child while they watch any screen, whether it’s a tablet, cellphone or television. Don’t have time to watch “Frozen” with them for the 500th time? Keep them busy with Legos instead.

When it comes to smartwatches, Wainwright noted that they are “increasingly popular” in the Upper School and, in the Lower School, need to be kept inside backpacks. Parents may prefer a smartwatch to a cellphone for their child. Why? Because they are strapped to the child’s wrist, never left on the bus and the GPS tracking allows you to know where your children are 24/7.  Plus, they have minimal apps and no web browser or camera, so children are less likely to be exposed to distracting games, sexting and other adult content. Meanwhile, kids think they are cool and it gives parents another level of connectivity.

Designed with brightly colored plastic wristbands, children’s smartwatches have large faces that tell time digitally or analog. They also offer voice and video calls, cameras, games and activity tracking. More importantly, many allow parental controls.

In selecting a smartwatch for your child, be mindful that they are designed for specific age groups. For instance, TickTalk 4 is recommended for ages 4 and up. It has voice, video, emergency calling, texting and GPS tracking. For tweens and teens, the most coveted smartwatch is the Apple Watch SE2 which offers podcasts, audio books, music, video and a variety of faces, bands and hardware to make it uniquely their own. It also has a "school mode" that shuts off calls and videos during class time. Just be aware, smartwatches for children are available at all price points, from reasonable to you've-got-to-be-kidding and they also come with monthly fees.

Kiddie Pads

Designed in pastel colors of lightweight plastic without any sharp edges, Kiddie Pads are tablets with pre-installed children's apps marketed as entertainment for kids as young as 2. While some parents may find Baby's-First-Work-Station to be amusing, others will shy away from placing technology in the hands of a family member who is still in diapers.

Kiddie Pads require a child to respond to images and sounds. (If you have ever used an app to learn a foreign language, such as DuoLingo, you get the idea.) So there is the potential for learning their ABCs and numbers. Plus, there are parental controls. Just make sure that baby's first computer doesn't permit surfing the web.

Tablets for 6 and up

Tablets for older children come with the same lightweight, brightly colored plastic frame as Kiddie Pads, but they are not marketed as toys. Again, it's every parent's choice how much technology they want to bring into the home and at what age they want their children to get hooked on screens. However, many parents find these tablets keep kids occupied during long family trips or rainy days. Many SUVs come equipped with backseat video screens. 

Just as marketers track computer usage to sell adults products, the same goes for kids tablets. Amazon Fire HD Kids Pro Tablet includes a one-year subscription to Amazon Kids offering books, games, videos, apps from National Geographic, Marvel and LEGO.  But when the year is up, guess who has to pay up?