Is it ok to gift a 11 year old an Amazon Alexa Dot? (games, parents)
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If you were the parent of a 11 year old and someone gave your child an Amazon Dot for Christmas or for a birthday, would you be ok with it? I know this kid still has parental controls on their tablet so that made me question the Dot.
I have a 9yo who is getting a regular echo with the built in speaker. I am fine with this because we have Amazon Prime and an echo dot already so he is familiar.
I would only gift one to a kid with the parent's consent because it is an "always on" internet device which may or may not work with their wifi environment, privacy concerns, etc. Also it Needs to be managed and set up through an Amazon account via an app on a phone or a tablet. Additionally there is no built-in way to screen out songs with swearing or explicit content.
If the family does not have amazon prime the echo is still useful for weird skills and playing music for free from Pandora (with ads). The thing with the dot is that it is really made to connect to an external speaker. It has a tiny speaker but it is not really useful for listening to music on its own. We have ours using it's 3.5mm jack output to a speaker but the dot also has bluetooth and can talk to a wireless bluetooth speaker.
My son uses our dot to listen to his playlist, play word games, double check his math homework and I bought him two wifi plugs for Christmas that he can control via voice with his Echo.
If you were the parent of a 11 year old and someone gave your child an Amazon Dot for Christmas or for a birthday, would you be ok with it? I know this kid still has parental controls on their tablet so that made me question the Dot.
Seems like a question you should be asking the parents. Some will be fine, others won't be. My SO thinks those 'always on" devices are creepy and pointless, and would say no to it even if our child was 16-17 years old. But then my nephews have one, so my sister and BIL are fine with it for their 6 and 12 year old.
Our 4-year olds are the primary users of the Alexa in our main living area. I'll be honest, after a year with it, the damn thing is a useless novelty that I've used maybe a handful of times for various "smart" features.
But the kids get a kick out of using it to play various kids songs they like to hear, or play the animal game.
Obviously they use it under our supervision as we hear anything that Alexa says.
Most of our use these days is to play music and get weather updates.
My son uses our dot to listen to his playlist, play word games, double check his math homework and I bought him two wifi plugs for Christmas that he can control via voice with his Echo.
At least he used it to double check. Last year, when DD1 was in 3rd grade, she whipped out a homework assignment, walked right over to our Echo and asked Alexa to start solving what she was working on, all while I was sitting nearby. Needless to say, she didn't get far with that approach.
It is a little frustrating to hear our 7 year old try and use it. She's getting better at it, but there are still a lot of Umms and Ahhs that cause Alexa to respond "Sorry, I didn't get that", which only causes my daughter to yell the same mistakes at Alexa in an increasingly loud voice.
I would not appreciate my 10 year old daughter getting one of those. One, she has parental controls on her tablet. Two, aren't there subscription fees that come with it that I would have to pay? Not going to happen.
I think of that as more of a family or household gift than a gift for a kid as it really involves more than 'plug and play', if that makes sense. I would only give it as a gift to a kid if I cleared it with the parents first.
My 3 year old loves our Google home for random things. And the 6 year old uses it for trivia answers. Its their google search before they know how to type. But also gave our kids Ipads for their 2nd birthdays so we're weird I guess
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