Reports abound about how high-tech can drive a wedge between parents and children, but Chinese education entrepreneurs are showing how smartphones can also be used as a tool to build family bonds.
At the annual assembly of the World Organization for Early Childhood Education in the US in Washington at the end of July, a Chinese family-play cellphone application received significant attention for the way it used technology to serve family relationships.
China has 120 million families with children under age 6, a potentially huge market for family-play development.
"We must realize that no one can live without cellphones nowadays. Instead of refuting that fact, seeing smartphones as a poison and avoiding them at all costs, why not take advantage of the new technology and develop it into a parent aid?" asked Li Bai, founder of Babycan, a startup education company that focuses on the development of family-play applications.
Li's team designed a mobile-phone application that includes 1,000 activities, allowing parents and children to play together regardless of time or location.
"For example, when a family waits for food at a restaurant and the child gets bored and agitated, parents can choose the 'restaurant' scenario and quickly learn a restaurant activity, playing with the child," Li said.
In the restaurant activity, the player sprinkles salt and pepper on a table and rubs a straw between a set of hands. Then a straw appears above the table. Pepper clings first to the straw, then the salt clings as the straw gets closer.
"Straw, pepper and salt are all commonly seen items in a restaurant. Once parents demonstrate the activity, children can explore it themselves," Li said. "The activities are not simply cartoons that can attract children's attention and free up parents, but require parent and children's participation and interaction."
Many parents do not know how to play with children, Li said. The application collects information about the children's development and can recommend suitable activities, according to responses and preferences.
"We are in the midst of a constantly changing society. Children's activities have changed as well," Li said.
When users submit information about their children, such as gender and age, the application then recommends suitable activities.
Xia Jing, assistant professor of early childhood education at Capital Normal University, said long work hours and extensive pressure have reduced the time parents have to spend with their children. "Companion quality also drops," Xia said.
Xia's research found that 83 percent of parents realize family play is important for child development. But about 79 percent of parents are confused about how to do it.
"To be with children is not simply taking time and watching cartoons with them, but it requires detailed methods and strategies," Xia said.
Information technology can provide more precise support for individualized education, Xia said.
"Smartphones should be an important supportive tool in family education. Based on collected big data, information technology could recommend suitable content to players and assist players in evaluating and sharing responses, further helping the application to recommend more suitable content to players again," Xia said.
Yan Qiao, a mother of two boys with very different personalities, said that when the 4-year-old and 7-year-old play together, quarrels occasionally occur. When a parent steps in, perhaps to separate them, they might both burst into tears.
"I love them and I want to play with them, but sometimes I am just out of ideas," she said. "The application is like an activity dictionary, and it inspired me in many ways to play with them. Most important, they need my interpretation and participation to play. I don't need to worry about smartphones taking my babies away."
The activities might not be a permanent solution, but "it's worked for nearly two weeks and they could update other versions of games," Yan said.
