From Leapfrog, maker of all things loud and useless, comes a new product you've really got to hope nobody sends your kid for her birthday -- the Baby BlackBerry. We all know that babies, toddlers and preschoolers are magnetically attracted to all their parents' electronic goodies (in our house, the iPhones are zealously guarded, lest the toddler make off with one and smear the screen with his grubby little hands), but is that any reason to buy them one of their own? Isn't this inviting an ever-faster indoctrination into the cult of consumerism, creating a new generation that will be even more disconnected from actual interaction that those preceding it?
Apparently the thing costs around $25, features simple games and a "pretend browser," along with a virtual pal named Scout, with whom preschoolers who can spell may exchange fake text messages. It's hard not to see this as a gateway drug to ever more expensive real phones and PDAs, a scary thought for those parents who had been hoping to wait till at least middle school before all that mess. As the parent of a toddler and a teenager, I will try not to scare you by telling you how many text messages the teen sends a month, but it's pretty impressive.
Leapfrog has made a mint selling things kids don't actually need, marketing to parents (and, I'm guessing, lots of grandparents) by appealing to their insecurity about being left behind in the great electronic revolution. I'm here to tell you that my toddler things the old calculator I gave him is a phone (or sometimes a "puter"), because it has keys and numbers, and he can carry it around and pretend to talk to Nana all he likes. Works for us!
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