Inspired by this thread.
A few months ago, I was greatly amused by my youngest daughter who was “talking” to our tablet. She repeated “Game Panda kitchen” again and again, articulating each syllable very carefully. “So cute”, I thought “She thinks it’s going to take her to her favourite games.”
I let her do that for a while then, worrying that she might get frustrated, I told her: “You know, that’s not how it works. You need to type your request but for that, you’ll have to wait until you can write”. She stared at me with a puzzled look on her face. “Of course it works”, she finally replied. “Come on”, I said, coming closer to see what she was doing, “The tablet can’t hear you. It doesn’t understand you either”. More staring. Then, she calmly said “Game Panda kitchen” and presto! the game she wanted appeared on the screen.
The kicker: I’ve used voice-activated phones for over ten years.
There goes my credibility :o.
Kids are a mixture of Cute and Naïve and Hipper Than You, and if you always assume one state, you’ll be floored when , in one particular context, they are the other.
I’m constantly reminded of this by MilliCal, who is infinitely Hipper Than Me on social media and a lot of current Pop Culture, and on controls and features on her cell phone and tablet. But I still get to perform upgrades and fixes on our desktop computer, and she has surprising (to me) lapses in Pop Culture knowledge prior to her birth, or outside her area of interest.
except, of course, when she suddenly displays knowledge of 1940s movie stars, or knows some computer trick I haven’t heard of.
My two-year old niece has taught me a few things about smartphones, like how to get a scrollable thumbnail view while viewing a photo in the Android Gallery app. Really she just learned through relentless tapping but she does latch onto the things that work. Kids that age love repetition.