Spying Smart Toys: How To Keep Your Kids Safe

In the era of modern conveniences where Amazon’s Alexa is ready to play any song or order you laundry pods and also collect an immense amount of data on your life, we should not forget these same technologies are making their way to children’s toys. Bluetooth, voice recognition, and other cutting-edge technologies are now bundled into the mechanics of what appear to be seemingly innocent toys.

The most controversial and prominent example is the My Friend Cayla doll. Cayla is an American made doll that lights up and can speak back to children and respond to questions like other voice technology connected to Bluetooth. The doll’s ability to connect to the Internet and its Bluetooth capability has brought pause in foreign countries.

Disturbing Videos On YouTube Kids

If you let your kids watch the YouTube Kids app, here’s a warning: some videos popping up might be extremely disturbing to them…and you.

At first glance, the videos look like normal cartoons for kids. But keep watching and you’ll see violent and lewd situations, disturbing visuals and intentionally upsetting content. Often, these videos are set to nursery rhymes. If you were only listening to your child watch the app, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell something is amiss.

Decoding Teen Text Talk

Kids have been keeping secrets from their parents for ages. Today’s technology however, has made teens’ covert communications even more challenging for parents to crack.

While you might trust your kid to make good decisions among friends, social media and smartphones have enabled teens to be influenced by much larger circles of people than just their peers at school.

Hence, the evolution of teen text codes. This “language” of acronyms can be fun and innocent – you probably even use some of the acronyms yourself, like LOL or GR8 – but some of these text codes aren’t so harmless, and can conceal communications on topics such as suicide, bullying, sex and drugs.